Day By Day
by spheeris1
Summary: AU :: Multi-chapter :: Angst and romance and introspective rambling :: Ashley POV :: It's when you realize that you don't have life all figured out that it starts making sense. :: Eventual Spashley, some Spaiden, a moment of Madison/Ashley :: COMPLETED
1. you and me both, kid

**So, I finally have a new PC. Now I can write when I want... and not have to beg others to let me use their computer. An update to 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away' will be forthcoming. **

**This idea, however, is bugging me. Got it from a talk with a fellow SON fan. It will be multi-chapter. No idea where it will end up. This is just a taste. I will not be updating it (I think...) until I've finished the Beatles/Spashley fic.**

**Right. Onward.**

/ / /

She has gotten used to the music they play in this place. The dulcet tones, trapped somewhere between martinis with golfing buddies and an elevator in some antique 50's style hotel, have been echoing in her brain ever since she arrived here.

At first, she balked at the noise. Because that's what everything sounded like - noise, fingernails down the chalkboard and jack-hammers into pavement and wailing children with snot dripping from their noses. The whole world was a mass of noise and her head felt like a non-stop symphony of agony.

Then she just was disgruntled by the music. Walking from one therapy room to the next, sitting in the cafeteria, waiting to be seen by the doctor or the nurses on staff or that once-a-week hypnotherapist. It followed her around like a shadow - easy listening jazz, bossa nova blahness - and those dark fingers slipped into her dreams as well. All of her nightmares had the soundtrack from _Our Man Flint_ running through them.

Now, though, she is used to it. In fact, guessing the title of some song or the artist who is performing it is now kind of like a game to her. She'll listen to the certain way someone is playing the trumpet or the sweep of orchestration... then she'll shift through a catalogue of musicians and see which one seems to fit.  
And once she has her answer, she'll stroll over to Tammie - who controls this barrage of hi-fi classics for the system switchboards - and she'll lean over the desk with a grin, ready to test her new-found knowledge.

Just like today. No more meet-ups with the doctor and she is not at all interested in the meal of the day (_stewed tomatoes and cornbeef... seriously, who comes up with this shit?_). All her fellow 'inmates' are busy with arts & crafts. Or crying on some shoulder. Or detoxing and shaking and talking about spiders. The halls are quiet - except for the music, which she believes to be one Nelson Riddle.

Tammie smiles over at her and raises one finely plucked eyebrow.

"Alright, superstar, let's see you get this one..."  
"It took some thought, because I think someone else did the original version... but I am going with Riddle."  
"As in Nelson Riddle?"  
"Yep."

Tammie shakes her head and Ashley knows she has gotten it right. Again.

"How the heck do you do that, kid?"  
"Because I am awesome."  
"You got a title to go with that, Miss Awesome?"  
"That's the easy part, Tammie. 'Lamento'."

Tammie laughs good-naturedly and points a finger at Ashley.

"You sure you don't have some hidden internet access in your room?"  
"Hey, this is all me here, okay? My dad collected so much vinyl he could have ran a fucking record shop, so I know my stuff."  
"When you first came in here, you could barely remember what had happened the day before and now look at you..."  
"Yea, clean out the drugs and a bunch of useless information comes pouring out of my mouth."

The song slowly and softly ends, with Tammie automatically pressing the red button to the left - which makes a bell toll along each and every part of this particular rehabilitation facility. A nice little signal for everyone to go to their next appropriate area, whether it be piss tests or phone-calls to distraught family members or to sit in a circle with a bunch of other junkies.

For Ashley, today is quiet. She'll steal a magazine or two, the ones that are new, and wander back to her room. She'll sit down and read every single line of every single article. And her fingers will tap, just a tiny bit, along the top of her thigh.  
She used to twist her hands and she used to grip her arms until she bruised and she used to do that crazy thing - you know, rocking back and forth and angrily muttering to no one.  
But not now. Now, she'll allow her fingers to tap on her thigh and that's okay.  
It's better than it used to be. And that is okay.  
It's better than okay. It's good.

After she's read the magazines, she'll toss them onto her bed and wander back out again. She'll peruse the menu for dinner and eat some part of it - not because it is that great, but she isn't into starving herself. That's an old habit, too.  
She'll tap her fingers lightly and she'll chew on some piece of bread steadily. Maybe even some dessert, if it's that apple pie that they got last week. She'll talk to some of the others in this place - like Ron, her 'neighbor', with his big arms and the fading scars from his days as a meth user. And he'll regale her with tales of his days in the clubs, full of glitter and wild sex. His eyes will dance and she'll know he is seeing something far more seductive than bodies covered in sweat.  
And her fingers will tap just a little faster, as they always do when she is reminded of those things she is pushing away.

The rush and the heat and the let-down. The burst of white-hot against her eyes, pummeling her mind like wave, as she takes the first hit. The sensation of being weightless and the sensation of words leaving her lips like they come from God. The way it made all those touches feel like bliss and the way it made all that sunlight feel like rubbish.  
The rush and the heat and the let-down.  
Ashley probably won't ever truly forget. But she is trying to remember what came before all of that and that is why she is here at all.  
Because she started to forget Ashley and only recall the needle resting in her veins.  
Because she started to forget all that pointless trivia inside. Because she started to forget to eat or shower or change clothes.  
Because Ashley started to forget everything and everyone.

As the night goes on, she'll say hello to several of the nurses and they will smile at her, perhaps even stopping to chat for a moment. They'll moan about their feet or their back. Or they'll talk about their weekend and she'll actually listen.  
She's learned to listen these days. She's learned to hear other people when they talk and not just tune them out, not just blank them out of her vision and daydream about all those things she used to.  
Because that is how she used to communicate with people. She'd stare at them and they'd be talking and she'd be thinking if they were carrying anything - 'coz back then, she'd take anything and she'd do whatever she had to to get a high.  
It was once funny to her. It was once worth it.  
Not so much these days.  
And once the final bell tolls, the lights will be turned off and the music will be shut off and Ashley will walk back to her room.  
She'll lay down and she'll close her eyes and she'll sleep.  
And the next day will be much the same.  
And that's okay.

_No, that's great._

/ / /

A full year is long by lots of standards, but more so when you go to rehab.  
A lot can happen in a year. A lot can change in a year.  
The world outside of these protected walls can be completely different than how you left it. And you don't know if what is out there is good for you, not anymore.  
You don't know if you are good for the world either.  
Maybe you don't mix and match so well anymore. Maybe you never did. Maybe it was all the cocaine and ecstasy and alcohol that made you fit in so well.

A year is a long time. And Ashley isn't sure she is ready for this. Ashley isn't sure she is ready to leave just yet. And her fingers tap rapidly against her bouncing leg as she sits in the visitor's lounge, dressed for the first time in something other than those uniform gray scrub pants and plain white t-shirt.  
Well, she kept the pants on, because that old skirt just didn't appeal to her anymore - with it's barely there denim and cigarette burn on the right side.  
But she has on the tattered tank-top she was wearing the day she arrived - they have washed it and it smells like lavender - and she picks at the frayed band logo across her chest nervously.

A year is a long time to not see a familiar face. All the people in this place have become the scenery to Ashley's life and she knows them by heart now. The people she used to know - the dealers and the misfits, the hidden faces in every bar and in every club... She cannot recall them so well anymore.  
But she knows her sister the minute the girl walks in.  
A year is a long time to not see your sister, too.  
Especially when it was that same sister that carted you off to this place as you kicked and fought and gave said sister a nasty black-eye.  
As you cursed her and spit at her. As you told her to die and to go fuck... well, just about anything.  
A year is a long time no matter how you cut the hours.

Kyla waves like a little kid and Ashley awkwardly waves back. When the woman at the front of the room gives the go ahead, visitors can move forward. Some of them are crying and there are hugs, which are broken up without much fuss. The staff is fearful of drugs being passed along, even though they do a search at the gate. And Ashley gets it.  
Once an addict, always an addict.

Kyla walks over and Ashley stands up, gripping her plastic bag. They stand in front of each other like strangers. Which they are, kind of. All those days of sibling teasing and birthday parties and such, they are so far from today.  
Today, Ashley is feeling as lost as she ever did - like being fourteen and taunted in school - and, yet, she looks older than she should - lines on her face that fool those that look at her, seeing the marks of a hard life instead of the flush of all her young twenty-seven years.  
Kyla, though, is put together and fresh-faced. Kyla tugs on a strand of her dark hair in anxiousness. Kyla is in brand-name jeans and her lips are a glossy pink.  
They are like some bizarre before-and-after picture come to life.  
And it all just depends on which direction you want to go - uptown or downtown, the sister with the pretty life or the sister who gave up on life.

"Hey Ash."  
"Hey Ky."

The nicknames bring a smile to them both and the tension loses a hint of its edge.

"Do, uh... do you need help packing up?" Kyla asks haltingly and Ashley can't help but snort out a laugh.  
"Nah, I think I've got it covered." Ashley replies, holding up the bag with her skirt in it and her old wallet and a matchbook from some place called The Shanghai Surprise.  
She thinks it is a strip club, but the memories are hazy at best.  
Kyla's eyes shift around and the hand is still toying with the hair. And Ashley is no longer tapping her fingers, because her foot is tapping instead.  
And it is all wrong, this feeling of being disconnected, but she has no clue on how to fix it.  
She could barely fix herself and it took a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of persistence to get this far.  
It's hard to get back to normal when normal is like a distant shore and you are just learning to doggie-paddle.

But then Kyla reaches out, blink and you might miss it though it may be... Kyla reaches out and pulls Ashley into an embrace.  
A strong arm around her shoulders and a firm palm pressed to her back. A gust of warm air against her ear, a breath with a whisper attached to it.

"Let's get you out of here, okay?"

And Ashley is pulled out just as she was pushed in, back to the world one year later, a world she doesn't know a damn thing about.  
But Kyla is still holding her hand.  
And for the first time in a long while, Ashley is feeling the sun on her skin and it feels alright.

/ / /

"So, I have this idea and I think it will be a good way to sort of help you adjust."

It's been two weeks. And Ashley has read more than she ever has in her entire life - magazines at first, but now it is books.  
And she doesn't leave Kyla's two bedroom apartment, not even to sit on the stoop and inhale some city air.  
She just reads all day long and cleans the apartment to the point that one could eat off the floor, if they were so inclined.  
She's read philosophy books. And books about the second world war. She has read over cooking books and written down notes in the margins, add-ons to recipes. She has read erotica and been left feeling not so much turned-on as bored.  
Is it a side-effect of purging your blood of false happiness that leaves one adrift? Is it an unspoken state of being that all of these survivors of substance abuse must get used to - kind of hiding from life and kind of numb to everything?

Or is it the fact that Ashley can feel things now and it scares her to death?

No line of powder to cower behind. No dark corner with the snap of rubber ringing in her ears to shelter her bones in. Nope, she is here in the world now - sober and eyes wide open - and she is fucking terrified.  
Ashley shuts the book that is propped up on her stomach as she lays on the couch, index finger for a book-mark, and turns her gaze to her sister.

"What's that?"  
"Some friends of mine are going to drive to the coast, you know, a last hurrah before college wraps up... and I was hoping that we could join them."  
"Um, well... maybe..."  
"Ash... c'mon, I've let you stay cooped up in here for days. And I get it, I do. You need to take your time and I want to help you in any way I can... but you have got to get out of here."

Ashley sighs and pushes her body upwards, shoving her bare feet into the cushions and she stares at the cover of her latest bit of reading material.  
_Zen And the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. _Heavy-handed crap masked as a revelation, that's all it is. But it takes up time and Ashley has a lot of time to take up.  
Besides, she has learned the art of finding lessons in the mire of mistakes.  
She's had to learn that after-all.

"I know, I know... okay, so what, it'll be... for like a day or two?"

Kyla smiles sheepishly and clears her throat.

"More like weeks."  
"What?"  
"It's summer break and they want to do a real road-trip."  
"To where?"  
"The coast."  
"**What **coast, Ky?"  
"The, uh, one on the east."  
"The east coast? As in... all the way across the damn country?"  
"You can take 40 all the way from here to, like, North Carolina."  
"They want to go to North Carolina?"  
"No, they want to take 40 and then shoot down to the Keys."  
"...Kyla?"  
"Yea?"  
"No fucking way."

And Ashley tries to leave it at that.  
Because that is too much, too far, too... everything that Ashley cannot handle right now.  
And Kyla should know better.  
They are piecing their relationship back together and the stitching is still so fine, still so easy to rip open again.  
She is trying to find her footing again. She is afraid to even go to the grocery store - fearful that she'll walk around in a stupor. Or worse, she'll never make it to the store at all.  
Or worse, that she'll detour and seek out that taste of something so horribly bittersweet.  
So, Ashley stays locked away and reads and cleans.

Kyla doesn't let up, though. She prods. She begs. She talks it out all mature-like. She writes up a list of pros and cons and leaves it under Ashley's bedroom door.  
Kyla whips up breakfast and serves it and beams, hoping that a plate of eggs and bacon will sway Ashley to agreeing.  
Kyla talks about the friends going, how cool they are and how fun they are and how they know about Ashley - but not everything about Ashley - and how they are happy to have her along for the journey.  
Kyla goes on and on and on, turning this trip into the last epic thing anyone could ever want to do.  
And Ashley finally breaks, unable to hold on to her ground as Kyla keeps tearing it away, a rug being subtly jerked out from under her feet.

"Okay."  
"...Okay?"  
"We can go."  
"Oh my god, Ash, you'll not regret this I swe-"  
"I have rules, Ky."  
"Yea, sure, of course."  
"Anywhere we stay, you stay with me, okay? And it's not because I don't trust you... it's, uh, because I don't trust myself. Not yet. Not fully."

Kyla takes Ashley's hand into her own and gives it a supportive squeeze.

"Not a problem. I'm all yours, Ash, you know it. I said anything and I meant it."

Ashley smiles a bit at that and allows her body to relax some.

"And I know how things like this go, so, uh, make sure to keep stuff hidden... alright? I mean like **really** hidden, Kyla. I want to say I can stay strong and I think I can... but I don't want to be tempted. Not by anything. Got it?"

Kyla nods quickly and then tugs Ashley into a hug. Which she does a lot of, hugging Ashley at every turn. It took a moment or two to get used to. It still takes getting used to. But this is life, full of uncomfortable situations... and pretty amazing ones, too... and Ashley wants to be a part of it. Not just a girl on the side-lines, not just a statistic, not just a random pill being popped.  
And maybe this is the way to do it. Not just a baby-step out the door, but to break out into a sprint. Not really alone, but with someone who gives a damn... and, maybe, Ashley can learn to give a damn, too.  
Maybe she already has.  
'Day by day' they say in rehab. 'Step by step' repeated at the end of each painful session.

And so Ashley agrees to do just that, all the way to the east coast and back.

/ / /

**TBC**


	2. i felt unfettered and alive

_Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: great minds are skeptical. (__**Friedrich Nietzsche**__, 1890)_

It's not the best thing to read right before you pack yourself up into a car with strangers. Mostly strangers. Not that Ashley can claim to know this version of Kyla - studious and with a future, not just some little girl in Ashley's wasted shadow. This version of her sister has a life, one with friends and plans and things like that.  
And Ashley's life has been on hold for so long that she suspects the universe has just hung up - the dial tone sounds a lot like silence when she thinks about it.

But that's what you get when you read too much philosophy, after spending a year in rehab and all those lovely chemicals leave your blood - but not your heart - and you try to fill up the holes with someone else's words.  
Like putting down pavement over busted up roads, Ashley is a highway in need of repair and she wants to think that the work is finally being done...  
...But she is about to pack her body into a car with strangers.  
Mostly strangers.  
And those fingers are tapping.  
Tapping out staccato beats and disjointed rhythms, a drummer with not a kit in sight, and she is wondering why she ever agreed to this.  
Because this is a mistake, with red flags and everything.

"There they are!" Kyla calls out excitedly, standing up and two bags already in hand. Ashley holds the strap to her duffel bag like one clings to a rope tied to a dock. And she is thinking in analogies more these days. And is it the books to blame? Or the forced clarity of mind?  
Was she always more like this and less like she seemed?  
The urge to slip something into her veins rears up, a wild horse of white, and she swallows so hard - to the point of her throat going painfully dry.

_And this is just the first fucking day... Jesus Christ, why am I doing this? I should be inside. I shouldn't have left Tammie or those doctors. What am I doing?_

But Kyla's eyes are boring into Ashley's, steady and sure, and the bag is lifted from her grasp. The hand that cups her face is gentle and cool and Ashley doesn't feel like the older sister now. In fact, she never really did. And this is just a reminder.

"Ash, everything will be fine. I promise. You've got me... you've got me."

And she swallows again. And it doesn't hurt as much. And she blinks and she doesn't fake a smile, it is just really small. But Kyla takes it and runs with it.  
The SUV pulls up to the curb, a window rolls down and the happy tanned face of some woman pops out, grin at the ready.

"Hey girl, you ready to do this?"  
"Hell yes!" Kyla exclaims and the woman laughs in return, dark eyes moving like a flash over Ashley. The grin does not fade. It does what all grins do on pretty faces - it simmers. Ashley remembers looks like that, somewhere in her past, and cannot fathom how to handle it in the present.  
"And you must be Ashley, right?" The woman asks as Kyla goes to the back, opening up the back and tossing their bags inside.  
"Yea." She answers softly, even with a nod of her head, and that grin turns on some kind of heat all its own.

_Uh huh, I remember looks like that. They used to proceed things that I wanted more than air._

"Cool. Kyla can't shut up about you."  
"That's 'coz Kyla can't shut up in general."

The woman laughs and Ashley smiles, just a bit.  
Because this is more difficult that it appears. Because this is a kind of interaction that she has never truly had. Sure, there was all the 'before addiction' days, but that was being a kid and a kid doesn't over-think. A child just does.  
Adults ponder and try to plot out things that they cannot control.  
She has forgotten how to be casually honest. She's forgotten how to do a lot of things that everyone else knows how to do.

"I'm Madison, by the way." The woman states as Ashley nears the automobile, following Ashley's moves with those dark eyes.  
Eyes that are casually honest. Eyes that Ashley all at once envies and wants to run from.  
But running away is an old habit, too.  
Kyla is climbing into the other side and telling Ashley to 'hurry up so we can get going' and so Ashley smiles - just a bit - at Madison and slips into the back seat.

The door shuts. And there is no going back now. And Ashley wants to trust it, wants to say that this is going to be alright. But all that philosophy is rattling around in her head and it begs to differ.  
It begs for the chance to say 'I told you so'.

/ / /

A guy is at the wheel, eyes in the rear-view as Madison takes it upon herself to introduce everyone - a road trip roll call, so to speak.

"This is Aiden, our currently stoic driver. And in the very back is one disgruntled Spencer. They are having a lover's spat."  
"Madison..." The guy named Aiden says in a warning tone.  
"God, shut the fuck up, Madison." The girl named Spencer says at the same time, her voice like a pissed-off sigh, almost breathless with irritation.  
"Guys, c'mon... not now, not the minute we are supposed to set out..." Kyla pleads. There are two mumbles that sound a lot like giving in. Or something close enough for Kyla, because she smiles and settles into her seat.  
Ashley, for her part, does not comment at all. She sits as silent as a stone and questions her sanity - once more.

Madison turns around, locking her gaze onto Ashley again as the SUV pulls away and starts down this little side-road, leaving the safety of Kyla's apartment behind. Leaving behind all that Ashley has known for the past few weeks. Leaving behind that net that Ashley has been so reluctant to escape from.

"Hope you are ready for this, Ashley. It's gonna be like Melrose Place on wheels with these two." Dark eyes dart between Aiden and Spencer in the back, a smirk replacing the grin.  
"No, dont' say that, Madison! You'll make her regret coming along."

_I'm already there, sis. No worries._

"Nah, don't do that, Ashley. It'll be great. The trip of your life, I promise." Madison winks and then turns back around.  
And Ashley thinks for a second about what Madison just said, that simple phrase, and how a statement like that used to be about something else all together.  
A trip, metaphorically, 'round the depths of your soul - yea, she has been on that trip.  
A trip down and down into the dark places, bottles that do not end... at least until you pass out. At least until you wake up in a hospital, stomach being pumped.  
'The trip of your life, I promise' was said to her one day and Ashley jumped at the chance.  
She said those same words to so many others, back then, in that past she deals with so unsteadily.

_I shouldn't be reading philosophy at all, I think._

But they hit the interstate and the radio is on, playing something typically Top 40, and Kyla is chatting with Madison. And Aiden's eyes keep flicking backwards in that rear-view. And the girl named Spencer is not talking at all.  
And Ashley does not look back. But she can barely stand to look forward either.

Maybe that's been the issue all along, though.

/ / /

They leave Barstow, just another gleaming piece of plastic and metal amongst so many others. And Aiden has jumped into some of the conversation, something about a class that they all seem to dislike. Ashley stays quiet, though.

She watches the scenery fly by, has strange little thoughts about what it would be like to be running along side this car as it speeds down the road - to be able to move that quickly, to dodge signs and jump over brush...

She wonders what it would be like to move so freely.

The sun is barreling down and Madison turns off the air-conditioning, opting to open her window. The air is hot and it recklessly whips Ashley's hair around in the process, blasts of warmth. And it feels good. That's the funny thing to Ashley. It feels better than it should, that's what her head is saying, that's what a part of her is saying like it matters and like she should suddenly not react to the sensations.  
To not react to the breeze. To not react to the sunlight. To feel nothing... again.  
But she fights that impulse.  
She fights it, a gladiator against herself, a battle consisting of just one person.  
Like it has been for so long.  
So, Ashley closes her eyes and she lets that air cascade all over her and she tries to not just imagine what it would be like to be so unfettered.

She tries to make it happen.

A hand briefly takes her own, a tender grip that soon slides away, and Ashley flutters back to this world, glances at Kyla and they share a look that - for a moment - sets them both free.  
It doesn't solve everything. It doesn't tell all the stories and it doesn't whisper all those excuses, all those apologies.  
But it's another start after a whole lot of endings.  
And Ashley cannot deny new beginnings, even if they come in odd packaging.

_Like a trip across the country._

When they make their first stop, just outside the Arizona state line and with the Mojave all around them, the first discussion of detours come up.  
Aiden jokes about finding a big ball of yarn. Madison scoffs at that. Kyla says that she doesn't care and Ashley knows that that is not just to appease everyone else - it is just a part of her sister. Open and eager, not burnt by choices - that is Kyla Davies.  
Ashley envies that, too.  
Envy can be bitter, sure, but it can also just be an arrow - like on the signs they are all looking at from their seats - just a sense of direction, just a guidepost to yourself.  
Madison's truthful eyes. Kyla's inherent willingness.  
These are things that Ashley could learn from, if she so chooses.  
These are people she could learn from... if she wants to.

"Can we go to Red Rock?"

It's the voice of Spencer, no longer hard and annoyed, carrying out to all of their ears.  
And as Aiden easily agrees and Madison rolls her eyes - albeit good-naturedly - and Kyla asks 'isn't that in Nevada?', Ashley turns and sees Spencer for the first time.  
It's been hours since the girl has said a thing and Ashley kind of forgot about her, to be honest.  
But Ashley turns. And she not only sees Spencer, Spencer sees her as well.  
And Ashley doesn't remember a look like this one, not at all like what Madison is so simply tossing out there.  
It subtly locks on and neither one of them seem to know how to let it go.  
And Ashley does not like how it makes her feel. Not at all.  
Spencer's mouth twitches into a slightly shy grin.

"We haven't really met, have we?"  
"Uh... not officially, no."  
"Sorry about all that. It was stupid, me getting upset. Sorry."  
"No problem. It's cool."  
"So... I'm Spencer."  
"I'm-"  
"Ashley, Kyla's older sister... She talks about you a lot."  
"That seems to be the general complaint."

And the grin widens. It does not simmer. It just is.  
And Ashley's never seen anything like it, which is weird in of itself, because she has seen so much in her life. She's seen too much sometimes. She's seen bad things pretending to be whatever Spencer's grin is and their failure was only revealed with the drop of that high.

_What kind of let-down would you cause, a girl like you...?_

Ashley doesn't like this sudden feeling rolling inside her body and she's not even sure** what **it is she's feeling anyway.  
But she is missing that net again. Missing those walls. Missing that room that gets bolted at night. Missing the confines of therapy and old jazz tunes and horrible food.

"Red Rock it is!" Aiden shouts out. Kyla and Madison let out joyful whoops. Spencer blinks and the current is broken.  
And Ashley is glad for it, more so than she can explain. She turns back around and listens to Kyla ramble on about something, listens to Madison sing along to some song, listens to the things that aren't being said by the only couple in the automobile - Aiden's soft gaze shooting to a blonde haired woman with insanely deep blue eyes, who sits off to the left of Ashley's shoulder, and he is asking for some kind of forgiveness.

And Ashley goes back to the scenery by her window, not wanting to know if Spencer gives that consolation or not.  
Not even sure why it matters at all.

/ / /

**TBC**


	3. it's just something that we do

_"Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!"  
__**Captain Henry P. Jim Crowe**__ - 13th January 1943 - (Guadalcanal)_

Or, better yet, 'strike first, strike hard'... right?

But that's just a line, like all the others that just seem to tumble around in Ashley's liberated head. Drugs might have fucked her up, might have left her hollow and alone - but it kept things quiet. It kept things numb.

Now, new information sticks all too well. And the old knowledge bubbles up, hot like lava, burning up her brain with the names to songs. Or the instructions on how to put together a home gym. Or the best way to cook a turkey. Or what it was like to be a solider, stuck in a whole lot of mud and blood, praying for death to be the nightmare and not the reality.

But this is just things she's read, tracing the lines with her weary eyes, fingers turning pages so they won't tap for a while.  
And she was trying to be brave, for the millionth time, in not packing a single novel or autobiography. She was trying to break the self-imposed cycle.

The question now becomes... _will it work? Or will this, too, prove too much... too soon?_

It's not a bar, though. Just the slope of rocks, shifting under the afternoon sun, tan and red.  
It's not a club, after-all. Just outcroppings and blackbrush, juniper and agave.  
This should be easy, right?  
The smell of distant smoke, fires that shouldn't be, and the heat rising up from the ground.  
Everything is so hot. So alive. So much of what Ashley has been used to ignoring.  
And, if she weren't focusing so hard on breathing, she might pass out.

She might anyway.

"Hey, we are only twenty minutes from Vegas..." Aiden says happily as they all stand outside of the car. Madison keeps taking measured bites of some health-bar, which is drizzled with chocolate... which seems counter-productive.  
But then Ashley gets it. She'd drain her life away in whatever she could and would still manage to drink only water. Well, only water when it wasn't whiskey. Or something harder.  
It can be amusing to step back and see how you'll fool yourself so you can get what you want.

Kyla shakes her head in the negative.

"Let's skip it. Everyone goes to Vegas."

And Ashley wonders if that was for her, glancing at her sister subtly. She wonders if that was an attempt at protection, creating the buffer that Ashley knows she needs. Or, at the very least, desperately wants.

"Yea, I'm with Kyla on this one. Besides, we've got the whole afternoon... I'd like to hike around some."  
"Hike?" Madison questions, raising one eyebrow, just like the pros in all those stylish magazines - the kind that Ashley read in rehab, cover to cover.  
"That thing you do with your feet and legs, usually in the realm of nature... you heard of it?" Spencer counters.

It's playful. It's a well-traveled bit of banter. It's humor with an edge.  
And Ashley can see how it could turn sour. She hopes it doesn't.

_At least not until I can get back to Kyla's place. Then they can do whatever they want._

But the two girls are smiling at one another and Ashley thinks that maybe it is just her own paranoia. Maybe it is her own stuttering within all relationships that causes her to fear, causes her to want to stay down... stay underground...

"Fine then. Let's walk around and get sweaty and... then what?" Madison continues.  
"We can camp here. It's says so." Aiden points to the sign that the rest of them did not notice.  
"We don't have much to eat..." Kyla supplies.  
"Hike first. Eat later. Sound good to everyone?" Spencer looks at each of them, something decidedly steely in that gaze.  
It ends on Ashley and looking at Spencer kind of hurts. Looking at someone so sure, so ready to bend the world to their will... it fosters some kind of sickening ache in Ashley's bones.

So, she nods in agreement and Spencer utters a 'that's settled then'. Ashley averts all her attention to the sandstone surrounding them, only catching a distant glimpse of Aiden and Spencer as they fade from view, disappearing - hand in hand - along some trail that burrows into the desert.

"I know Aiden left his keys. Let's just say we hiked and go to Vegas instead." Madison suggests with a grin. Kyla laughs and even Ashley finds her lips quirk, a smile timidly trying to wake up.  
Trying to say something after too long of saying nothing. Trying to shine a light after all that darkness. Trying, oh yes, she is trying harder than ever before.

Ashley is trying to crawl up and out of herself.

/ / /

La Madre Springs winds them around and tugs them upward, along a gravel road and towards the sound of water.  
And the three of them are surprisingly quiet, with eyes shifting from a few passing hikers and dogs on leashes then up to the sky once more.  
Madison points out a cloud above, saying it looks like a giant nose and Kyla gets the giggles after that, which has always been difficult for the girl to stop once they start.  
Ashley has flashbacks of a sort - a six year old, cake and balloons and their father dressed as a clown and he fell over, not on purpose but tripping over something... and Kyla's giggles erupted. Bright and buoyant, Kyla let loose the jubilant little girl that day.  
Just as she does now. Just as she always will.

_If I do nothing else, I'll see to that. I can do that. I can make that stay true._

Ashley wants to talk to her sister, to really talk. And maybe it'll be soon, somewhere on these stretches of pavement laid out before them. Maybe she'll find the right words lingering on her dormant tongue. Maybe she'll finally figure out how to say thank you.

"Shit, look... look!" Madison hisses, reaching out and grabbing Ashley's wrist like it is something she has been doing for ages.  
But the three of them stand still, watching as two deer step up to the pool of water and drink - not seeing humans as they gawk.  
They might know that three women are there, though. They might know and not give a damn.  
Why should they care after-all?  
Muscles shifting under fine brown fur, the lapping of a cool drink, with only the call of birds over-head and the tiniest gust of wind... why would they care about three women, staring and whispering?

"They are beautiful, aren't they?" Kyla says softly.  
"Yea, yea they are..." Madison concurs and her hold on Ashley's wrist goes slack, but does not immediately leave.  
Kyla has found beauty in the deer. Madison has found beauty elsewhere.  
And Ashley takes a deep breath, studies the way laquered eyes of black dart towards them - but seemingly focus on her alone - and there is something in her soul that just begs to break-down.

But what that notion is, what that desire is and how it will manifest, Ashley may never know.

_Maybe I am too afraid to know._

They watch, though, until the two deer leave - hooves into dust, skirting away, experts at blending in and making their escape.  
And Ashley finds that envy there once more, a flame she doesn't know how to put out.

/ / /

"...And so everything was great and we started back, but then Kyla thought she saw a snake-"  
"No, I **saw** a snake. I didn't just **think** I saw one, okay?"  
"As I was saying, Kyla had a snake delusion... or illusion, whatever... and proceeded to bust the ear-drums of every living thing within a fifty mile radius."  
"Fuck you, I did **not** do that!"  
"Yes** you **did! C'mon Ashley, back me up on this..."

Kyla's glare is like the point of a knife. Madison's devilish look is worthy of a movie-spy.  
And she can feel Aiden and Spencer opposite her, waiting for what comes next. She can feel Aiden's smile upon her, involved and amused. She can feel Spencer's smile, too. But she doesn't want to hesitate over that fact.

"I, uh, plead the fifth." Ashley says, taking a large bite of her slice of pizza, smothering a real grin that sneaks up on her. It tickles at her subconscious like a dream one forgets with the dawn, a slightly foreign thing - this smile - but heavy with 'once upon a time' kind of emotions.  
"Chicken." Spencer's teasing voice floats over the table and makes its mark as well as a slap might, leaving an imprint not on Ashley's cheek but somewhere far deeper.  
She lifts her glass first, then her eyes, finding Spencer's gaze on her - taunting and almost cool, saying something else... saying something else again...

And the words repeat.

_Maybe I am too afraid to know._

"Well, that sounds more eventful than our hike. The views were good, but no screaming girls or possible snakes. I feel cheated." Aiden chimes in, still smiling, still amused.  
"I took some good pictures, though. Really great light up there." Spencer mentions, ever so slowly pulling her eyes back to the rest of the table.  
No one seems to notice just how slow that move was. No one but Ashley, who sips her water and tries to drown out the sudden pounding of her erratic heart.

Madison suggests a pitcher of beer and Aiden is all for it. Spencer does not seem to care one way or another. Ashley clears her throat and starts to say...

_Fuck if I know. 'Sorry I can't because I might get totally trashed and then ditch you all for the nearest serious bar and drink until I can't stand up'... yea, that's got to be a bit of an over-kill._

Kyla, though, is always the one who stands by her statements. Others will fail you. Even **you** will fail you. But not her, not Kyla, not Ashley's sister - giggles and all.

"I'm really not in the mood for that, guys."  
"Kyla, are you kidding? I seem to recall a party, two months ago, where you made off with-"  
"Madison, let's just pretend that didn't happen."  
"Oh, I heard about this one!" Spencer exclaims, coming back to life, but Ashley is keeping her observations on her sister this time. She is taking in the way the flush of embarrassment and the hint of worry paint Kyla's face, rising up from below in a blush of pink and faint lines along the forehead.  
She is watching as her sister gets battered in the lightest of ways, all for her sake.  
"Talk of the campus, I believe..." Aiden says with a chuckle.  
They laugh - Spencer, Madison and Aiden - a reel playing in their minds of something Ashley missed. But it doesn't take much imagination.

Because Ashley has done it all. She's done far more than her sister ever could on her worst bender. She's done more than Aiden and his possible frat-boy pranks. More than Madison and her devious nights. More than Spencer and her hidden world.  
She's done it all, more than once.  
And maybe thank you is more than a phrase. Maybe it is an action.  
'Strike first, strike hard'.  
Climb up and out.

"It's really down to me, actually. I am not much of a drinker... and Kyla was just being supportive." Ashley cuts through the meandering laughter, allows it to die down and turn to strange curiosity. Or awkwardness. Or both.  
"Ash..." Kyla murmurs, already eager to take the blows - if they are to come.  
"It's okay. Promise." Ashley assures her sister.  
But the assurance is shaky at best and a total lie at the worst and they both know it.

"Then forget it. We go back and set up camp and tell ghost stories. Who needs beer?"

And there she is, Spencer, taking back an accusation as swiftly as she gave it - that blue now a shade of understanding, brief and true, and Ashley feels buried by it.  
Absolutely buried alive by it.  
Madison and Aiden concede. The bill gets split and paid. They drive back, the sun dipping low and the first stars starting to come out.  
Kyla takes Ashley's hand and coasts right into an embrace, the two of them an island in this ocean of sand and stone.

"You didn't have to."  
"I know."

And the ghost stories that are told are silly and stupid. But the real haunting lurks around Ashley's fingers, itching and anxious still, longing for release.  
And the real specters are not killers with hooks or girls who need a ride home, but the quiet evening to come... and all its cloaked urges, all its concealed past times.

So, Ashley does not count sheep. She wonders about the deer and wonders where they sleep, where they find solace in a world built of buildings.  
Do they miss the endless trees? Do they miss what the air smelled like before the invention of metal machines? Do they ever wish away today for yesterday?

_Do they ever turn tail and run just because they can?_

Slumber descends, though, and the answers are lost.

/ / /

**TBC **


	4. get these good feelings when i get home

_Tell me what you eat, I'll tell you who you are. - __**Anthelme Brillat-Savarin**_

Is it that simple, though? Can you be catalogued so easily? Are you always going to be the ingredients that others put inside of you - a piece of this, a shred of that - a DNA salad all your own... but not by your own hand?

Ashley is in the very back of the SUV today, not feeling the urge to look as the road and the flatlands pass her by as they barrel back towards 40.  
And soon they will be in Arizona, more arrid lands and dust-devils and such.  
There is already talk of checking out the Grand Canyon and Ashley figures that they kind of **have** to.

_It'd be strange not to, really..._

But she is in a funny way today, in the back of this automobile and ear-plugs in and staying very quiet. Kyla darts those worried eyes back every so often, to the point where Ashley must shut her own eyes just to escape the concern.  
She likes it most times, that much is true.  
But, today... Today the past is close and the present is a mystery.  
And Ashley cannot be pushed to participate.

Kyla and Madison share the middle seat this time, their voices like the hum of a fan.  
Steady and sure, cutting through the air in a nice way - they move the atmosphere around that would be stagnant otherwise.  
It's a good thing in every way.  
Because Spencer is driving and, apparently, the girl must concentrate. She isn't talking either. And it must be for the driving.  
Must be why she isn't even talking to Aiden, who sits in the passenger seat - alternating between gazing at Spencer and sighing towards the window.  
Madison's comment about a soap opera on wheels lurks and Ashley closes off her brief moment of watching - closes her brown stare with a hard finality.  
Because, really, why should she care either way?  
If they fight. If they make-up. If they do nothing at all.  
It's none of her concern.

But her eyes are looking once more, against her will, and Spencer catches it.  
Caught, however not just one-way... or that is what rumbles around Ashley's brain as the song in her ears plays on and her sister keeps talking and Aiden keeps staring unhappily out the window and Madison nods her side of conversation.  
Caught, blue eyes bear witness and slender fingers grip the steering wheel just a fraction tighter...  
...This time, Ashley breaks it off, though.

And she wonders if the biggest part of her is timidity, is fear, is trepidation.  
She wonders if that is the main ingredient in the dish that is Ashley Davies.  
And, finally, who made her this way?

_Ah, there it is... I knew you'd find your way back in, 'coz you never really left..._

The past is no longer close. The past is here, living and breathing by Ashley's side, knocking on her door. It won't be denied. It won't be shoved aside.  
And the old ways of ignorance have been cast aside, not a slim needle to be found nor a swift inhalation, and she is lost to the memories.

/ / /

She's talked about it all.  
At first, very unwillingly - imagine dragging a two year old child away from Mickey Mouse and into a store full of clothing - that was her, sitting in that circle with those strangers.  
And she was rough around the edges, hard to touch and even harder to hold.  
No one owned her. No one knew her. No one could save her and she knew it.

Eventually, though, she talked.  
About it all.  
And you go through stages, you know... After the anger and the denial came the shattering.  
Like putting glass up to light, the fractures appear if you look closely enough.  
And she was riddled with delicate fault-lines, criss-crossing the structure of her existence.  
And she finally broke apart.

What she once deemed a 'pathetic group of fucking losers, who can't handle their shit' soon became the people who picked her up when she fell so far down.  
They consoled when it was needed. They chastised when it was warranted.  
They didn't let her keep on stumbling. They forced her to stand up and walk.  
And she felt sadness at how messed up things were.  
And she felt long-buried tears drown her face - and that just kept happening. Every day for about a month or two.  
She never knew that there was that much painful sorrow in her body.  
And then came the guilt.

Ashley wanted to take the easy way out once that particular stage hit in.  
She pictured a blade to her wrists. She daydreamed, quite morbidly, of breaking out of the rehabilitation center and jacking a car and racing it off a cliff.  
Anything to not feel what she was feeling anymore. Anything to assuage the agony of knowing what you've become - and what you've done in the meantime.  
She thought of Kyla, the one who stuck around and made that bold move... she thought of Kyla with black-and-blue around one eye and Ashley would stare at her knuckles like they were not a part of her - a foreign enemy, a traitor in her midst.  
She thought of her parents, who never stopped her - that is just a fact - but they never stopped loving her either. They reached out and Ashley slammed the door in their faces.  
And she didn't know how to hold out a hand anymore, how to beg for forgiveness, how to rectify the wreckage she caused.

_I haven't. Not yet. I want to... but I haven't. Not yet. Not yet._

In the circle, everyone heard the horror stories of addiction.  
And some were really bad - things that no one should have to go through, lives that no one should have to live - and the only comfort they could find was in a bar or a hit.  
You seek out solace like flowers seek out sunlight - that is addiction. It seems natural.  
You tell yourself that it is, that you are just built this way, that every intake is okay and you can quit whenever you want and why should you quit anyway?  
It's all fun. It's all a blast. It makes the night seem better and it makes faces seem more attractive. It blurs the lines between real and not-so-real.  
The come-down is where the shit starts, waking you up with a sore head and a raw nose and all your money is gone - the come-down is where you can't hide.  
So you just keep chasing the high. If you never let the end happen, then you'll be just fine.  
That's what you tell yourself.  
That's addiction.

Her story isn't so bad, not really. And that's the thing - most of the stories are not like some Lifetime movie of the week. It's not all abuse and rape, though that is there - it does happen.  
More than it should. More than anyone cares to admit.  
But there are more of those who just couldn't handle something and sought out escape.  
And they just keep on searching, they just don't give up and face whatever the hell it is - they keep on playing hide-and-seek with their doubts.  
With their misgivings. With their terrified realizations about themselves.  
That's Ashley's story, in a fucking nutshell.

/ / /

So, yea, think about yourself as a kid and the life you had. Think about if you had a good life, the kind with parties and vacations and a family that built up everything for you.  
Christmas isn't just Christmas - it's a magical damn day. With cookies and gifts mysteriously appearing and notes for Santa.  
Birthdays are not just a cake and a present or two - it's all your friends and games and endless balloons.  
What if that was your life and you believed in it like a fairy tale?  
What if they made it seem like you were the center of it all?  
And then they took it all away. Not because they meant to, not like that, they don't want to wound you as they fight and falter and crumble before your very eyes - but there are always casualties in war. There is always a loss to be counted at the end of the day.

You get lost in their fray.  
And you get mad, because didn't they make things this way? Didn't they tell you one thing and then admit it was a lie? Didn't they put you up there only to knock you down?  
You bottle it up and you keep it down and you listen to the yells in the other room and you turn up your radio and you start having nightmares - and you don't tell a single soul about any of it.  
You just hide it away, bury it, hope that if you don't speak of it - it won't be true anymore.  
And you can't care for that little sister, the one wants to tag along as you start sneaking out at night, because you running too fast to give a shit about anyone.  
Like a ship going down, you are saving yourself.  
Or so you think. So you wish to believe.

And you are let in to places you should not even be at, but you are pretty and look older than you are - a fourteen year old in a house full of eighteen year olds - and that's where you find a new friend.  
Looks like tea, tastes like fire... and you drain it dry. And you do it again. And you throw up a little bit, but that's not enough to keep you away.  
Because you are running from everything - not just those parents and their bull-shit, not just the lies you perceive to be... but from darker things, from secret things, from potentially dangerous things...

You are running from yourself and, somewhere within, you know it.

Because you don't want to be gay.  
But you know you are.  
And now the lying begins in earnest, starting with your own lips.  
Lips that kiss boys and take in their tongues - not before you get drunk, though - and eager hands all over you, so convincing in the dark of someone's empty bedroom and with vodka spiriting through your system.  
And when it won't stop? When you can't stop looking too long, can't stop a fantasy from sneaking in?  
Well, you just push harder. You kiss more. You drink more. You sneak out more. You touch more. You are known too well by the time you hit eighteen and you don't seem to care much - for a while, a long while, you really like it.  
You've built your own kind of fairy tale, one more honest - right?  
And the lies keep on coming.

They just keep on coming until you wouldn't know the truth if it punched you in the face.

/ / /

Ashley's MP3 player is filled up with whatever songs she once listened to - before rehab, before reaching the status of 'junkie' - and she tries to recall why each song is on the player.  
The sad for days when she couldn't shake the feeling of listlessness.  
The droning house sounds for when she was too coked up, too wired to stay still.  
The moments of ambient that always signaled a good day - whether from a smooth high (usually pot or hash) or easy drinking, maybe a nice girl who isn't totally wasted like she so often was... and they'd sleep together and it would be better than expected - the sex wouldn't be frenzied and the caresses wouldn't feel so false.

It's a good track playing currently and she can feel the rolling underneath her body, the beat of rubber against yellow lines - it feels decent.  
And the past gets subtly moved back into its box for now.  
And the unknown present returns. But then... it never left, too.  
Kyla is dozing and Madison is, too. Aiden and Spencer are having a quiet conversation up front - he looks frustrated to Ashley's eyes.  
Spencer, forward all the way, taps one finger against the wheel. Repeatedly.  
Ashley wonders what fix the girl is trying to abstain from.  
And so Ashley is staring again, much to her own annoyance. And she is thinking about morning, which is hours ago now, wishing the imagery away as much as she wishes she could go back and relive it.

_Kyla was prepared. Tents and all. And the dawn greets Ashley's tired eyes. She didn't sleep well.  
And she is the first awake - unzipping the flap and stepping out, wrapping a blanket over her shoulders. The desert is hot during the day, sure, but fuck... it is cold at night and not so warm before the sun fully rises.  
It is beautiful, though. Purples and blues still, the hints of yellow and orange hovering around the lines of mountains - there is the scurry of animals nearby and then... nothing else.  
It is peaceful at some epic level and Ashley kind of likes it.  
The night was filled with too much internal noise.  
This is a good moment, though.  
So, she walks past the other tent - the one that holds Spencer and Aiden - and past the SUV, settling on a small outcropping, one that gives a good view of where they came from. The lay of the land. Then the interstate in the distance. Then, further still, California._

_"Goes on forever, doesn't it?"_

_And Ashley fights every impulse that assails her, that bombards her around the blonde and with no ascertainable reason as to why - and she nods her head in agreement._

_"Yea, it does. It's... really wonderful."_

_There is no response, not of the verbal kind, but Spencer is suddenly right beside Ashley and sitting down. Ashley feels like only a breath of air could come between them right now, arms too near and thighs crazily close._

_"Do you mind? Is this, like, your meditation time that I am crashing so rudely?"  
Ashley keeps on fighting as best she can - a soft smile grows upon her mouth instead of it being the sound of her feet rushing away.  
"Nope. Just, uh, watching the sun rise. Just being... well, here, I guess."  
"So... I can watch with you?"_

_Ashley looks over then, making the first bit of true contact - a full on look into Spencer's eyes - and the blonde girl is smiling so gently, like every answer rests along her lips, and all Ashley has to do is ask the right questions... and she'll tell all._

_"Yea. Sure." Ashley replies in a half-whisper._

_And they watch the sun remove the dusk from the sky, not saying another word.  
And it is a good moment. In fact, to Ashley's fluttering heart, it is the best moment in a long while._

Maybe it is not so mysterious, after-all. Maybe the present is making total sense.  
But it doesn't make it any easier to digest.  
As Ashley watches Aiden reach out slowly, place his hand upon Spencer's knee - and Spencer does not make him move. Or even feign indifference.  
She holds his hand in return.  
Oh so naturally, Spencer and Aiden seem to be alright again.  
And Madison wakes up, groaning about needing a bathroom break. Kyla keeps on sleeping, a light snore coming from her.

And Ashely closes her eyes, begging them to stay shut this time.

At least until this all passes. At least until this damn trip is over and done with. At least until sunrises and companionable silences can be locked away.

And the lies still keep coming.

/ / /

**TBC**


	5. go or go ahead and surprise me

"_Hope is like a piece of string when you're drowning; it just isn't enough to get you out by itself." – __**Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World**_

A word might penetrate, might break past your walls, and wake you up.  
Might make you think a little too hard as you hold the needle tip to your vein.  
Might make you look around, for just a second or two, at the room you are in - alone, always alone - and the clothes unwashed and the bed unmade and the curtains drawn.  
Might make you cry when you least expect to do so and those tears turn to uncontrollable rage, pushing you to slam fists into the wall and not make a dent - but draw blood.  
Your blood, red and rich and contaminated - there you are, at twenty-seven, and you've not talked to your parents in five years and you try to call up your sister every once in a while.  
But you tend to forget.  
You forget so much and only remember a few things.  
Dreams for dares. Love for losing.  
You tell yourself it is a fair trade, but you know it's not.

A word might make you pause, but it doesn't save you.

It does take so much more than a glimpse of hope - a glimmer of light at the end of that dark tunnel won't jerk you back to life...

...But it is a start. And so you can't discount hope, no matter how small.

Kyla called, one day in the not-so-distant past, leaving a voice-mail that echoed out and wormed its way into Ashley's slothful mind.  
It wasn't a shout. It wasn't a threat. It was a cold promise, a sure bet, and Ashley laid there on the floor - she had not eaten in a week and she couldn't keep her eyes open and her chest felt tight. Lips cracked as she lazily smiled, wondering if what Kyla was saying was some kind of joke.

"I'm coming to get you. Right now."

Click. Dial-tones and other sounds of the end, that's what Ashley smiled about - still high, still out of her head with hunger and chemicals.  
And Ashley thought, in that moment, that life was the biggest joke of all.

But Kyla came and dragged her up. Kyla came and made Ashley drink water and coffee. Ashley felt it all burn down her throat and she threw up most of it.  
The curtains pulled back, letting in bright L.A. sun, and Ashley's eyes shut quickly.

"What the fuck, Ky?"  
"I told you. I am getting you out of here. Today. You are coming with me."  
"What... to the mall or something?" Ashley laughs as she talk, finding something about trolling around shoe-stores with her kid sister amusing. Maybe it is because they used to do such things, at the ages of eleven and twelve, back when the world was about paid for and pretty.  
"Put these on."  
A tank top and a skirt hit Ashley's lifeless body, items she surely wore at some point - to some club, to some bar, to someone's bed - and like a damn robot, she does as told, still laughing to herself... imagining two little girls running from store to store, never a care.

Kyla came in and pushed her out the door.  
Kyla came and did what she said she would.  
It earned her a minute of actual pain and a year of doubt, but Kyla came - even when Ashley forgot how to call out for help.

Kyla came, a thread of hope, as Ashley was dying.  
And it wasn't much.  
But it was everything, in the end.

/ / /

"God, Spencer, is that** all **you want to do on this trip?"  
"What did you have in mind, Madison? A picture or two from the passenger seat all the way to Florida? It's a road trip. We are **supposed** to do stuff along the way."  
"But we did the hiking thing already!"  
"I like to hike. So sue me."  
"I wish I could..." Madison murmurs and Spencer coolly turns away, blue eyes imploring the rest of them to agree with her wishes. Because, as any child can tell you, majority rules.

Aiden is a given. And they all know it.  
Ashley doesn't want to figure out the two of them, the subtleties of their relationship.  
Ashley doesn't want to know why they always seem to be distant from one another, like something isn't being said and it is the very thing they have to say soon... She doesn't want to be aware of things like that about people she barely knows.  
It's too much knowledge for only several days in their company.

Kyla, ever the mediator, once again states that she is 'up for anything' - go or stay, she'll be there. Ashley wonders how her sister survived, why she didn't crack under the pressure.  
How did one of them end up going so far off track and the other one stayed on it?

"Ash?" Kyla questions and Ashley blinks, realizing that it is up to her. Again.  
It's not a position she is good with, being the decider or the final vote.  
She'd never make it on those reality competitions on television - she doesn't want the responsibility.  
Maybe that is another problem. A big problem, really.

"Whatever." She says quietly, avoiding Madison's annoyed glance and Spencer's triumphant smirk. The two girls are friends, that much can be seen. But there are moments of razor-sharp attacks between them, making Ashley ponder just how they met and how they came to be and how they make it work.

Kyla and her ability to carry on. Madison and Spencer being able to stay close, even when they cut each other to the quick.  
The fine art of navigating life and all its pit-falls.

_Yea, that's something else I misplaced._

Ashley knows she is a mass of uneven ground, much like the canyons surrounding them as they finalize this hiking debate. One wrong move and down you'll go - that's Ashley.  
Has been, maybe always will be - whether there is a drug around or not.  
Maybe Ashley will always be one step from crashing to the rocks below. Maybe she'll always be on the outside looking in, unable to maneuver the slopes and terrain of those varied relationships - adult to child, friend to friend, lover to another...

"Okay, we've got some small hikes, like an hour or two..." Aiden starts, opening up the guide upon the hood of the SUV. They all do various forms of peering at the winding lines of trails on paper.  
"I'd like a small one, thanks." Madison says with a smirk all her own. Her smirks are self-assured. They've had practice and now they are flawless.  
Spencer's smirks are something else all together.  
They seem a lot like a cover of some kind, a hard mask that hides something tender underneath. Spencer's smirks are not what they appear to be.

_You think about her too much. Stop it._

"So, what will it be, Ashley? A pansy-ass hike with the girls or are you up for more?" Spencer asks, arms crossed, once again playing the role of challenger. Like she is begging Ashley to break some unknown and unspoken rule. Like a girl looking for a fight, but where kicks come in the form of something else entirely - something that Ashley is not sure she can throw back. Or combat in the first place.

Spencer and Aiden are opting for the eight mile Uncle Jim. Madison is opting for the roughly four mile Transept. Kyla agrees to go with Madison's choice, the two of them like peas in a pod, able to chat about the frivolous as well as the serious no matter what they are doing - they will make the hike tolerable for each other.  
And Ashley thinks it would be safer to join her sister and Madison, for a multitude of reasons.  
For a million reasons that only seem to grow as each second passes, as Spencer's blue eyes stay on Ashley with unnerving focus.

"I guess I can manage eight miles."

But Ashley, for better or worse, has never been good at playing it safe.  
It is her blessing and her curse.  
It's a fine line, one that she is learning how to walk now - the tenuous wire between a life lived in shadow and a life spinning too fast.

And Spencer smiles.  
And Ashley can't help but think of the reasons as to why.

/ / /

Hundreds and hundreds of years, the hands of time within every crevice, impervious to the whims and follies of humans - though they all flock here, standing with fanny-packs and screaming children, taking pictures.  
The canyons do not care at all. They will be here long after Ashley dies, her bones to dust, and still the Grand Canyon will be here.  
It's a profound thought, to see something so gorgeous and huge and to feel so small - yet so totally at ease as well.  
Like looking up at the night sky, where the pitch black holds galaxies and universes not yet discovered, and you are just a speck of dust in it all.  
But you feel important, if only right then, because there you are - a tiny mixture of emotions and animal instincts... and you get to see such beauty.

Tammie would be increasingly proud, Ashley thinks as they reach they half-way mark of the trail. She would be proud of the woman behind the addiction, the one they all suspected might be there beyond all that blow and all that bravado.  
Ashley wasn't sure that person was around anymore.  
But there she was, the day she finally told her story. There she was, the day she finally admitted to having some serious problems and that she needed help. There she was, walking out those rehab doors with Kyla. There she was, hopping into a car with mostly strangers.

And here she is, breathing heavy and with the sheen of sweat along her brow, staring off into the vastness of reds and oranges and browns - seeing it all with new eyes, cleared of artifice, and Ashley inhales sharply.  
She inhales and releases the air, deep and wide.  
She takes it all in and then gives it back.  
And then she steps back just a bit and sees it all - the glare of the sun, white-hot; the blue sky and the ripples of clouds; the shadows cast down, the rolling of them over the rocks; and the dips and the curves and the palette of colors, stretched out for forever.  
It is more than beautiful, anyone can attest to that.  
But to Ashley it is solid and undeniable proof that, with a sober gaze, all things take on an extra level of magnificence.  
The true visual is not enhanced by how much she has drank or how fucked up she is.  
It just **is**.

"Check that out..." Aiden says, suddenly by her right side, and he is pointing upwards.  
And Ashley follows his aim, watching the seemingly relaxed flight of a bird, the barest hint of red at the tail as it circles and glides and swoops closer.  
And as it passes over them, it calls out - a loud echo that probably carries for miles against the walls of the canyon.  
Ashley finds herself grinning a little, watching as the bird gets smaller and smaller until it fades from view.  
When she brings her head back down, Aiden catches her eye and grins in return.

"This is all pretty awesome, isn't it?" He asks as they start hiking once more, Spencer in the lead and surprisingly quiet. Ashley watches the girl's back for a moment or two, how the pony-tail of blonde hair likes to swish back and forth with the cadence of her walk.  
"It is." She responds, jerking her attention back to where it belongs.  
"Though, I must admit, I had some Jack Kerouac daydreams about this journey... but I don't think those will pan out."  
She has read _On the Road_, too. The pages were soaked in the haze of wanderlust, which is enough to prompt anyone to set out and explore new worlds. But the familiar parts, the vague hints and the blatant phrases of narcotic recklessness made her freeze up.  
A shock of cold water to her warm body.  
And it took her five days to finish reading it.  
And Ashley looks at Aiden, the cut of his boyish jaw and the slight unshaven cheek, all tan and healthy and strong. Kerouac longings wouldn't sit well with a guy like this.  
They would ruin a guy like this. They would kill a guy like this.

"Maybe this is better, though... right?" He finishes and turns that grin back on her.  
Ashley smiles a bit in return.  
"Yea, I think it might be."  
And his grin gets more buoyant. He talks a bit more and Ashley does her best to keep up, her mind trying to do the right thing - trying to be that girl she found, cowering behind all her issues, that girl who is ready to grow up. Trying to be who Tammie saw walking out of those sanitized rooms and those white-washed halls.  
Trying to do what is right, not what is easy.

But Spencer's spine seems rigid and her silence is deafening and Ashley feels like the challenge is no longer being met - it is being stamped into the ground under the blonde's feet.

/ / /

They all eat, eventually.  
They talk about the hikes and then they meander in conversation, until it drifts to quiet and camp is finally set up at the North Rim.  
The stars pinprick the sky and Ashley studies them, only stopping when Kyla hugs her from behind. Ashley wraps her own arms about her sister's.

"All good?"  
"All good."

They stay like that for a bit, twin pairs of eyes staring up, the air starting to lose its heat and become cool - leaving their lips like a ghost.

"Are you happy you came along?" Kyla's voice is a whisper, even more secretive in the increasing dark of night.  
"Yea. Yea, I think so."  
"Don't sound too convincing or anything, okay?"  
But they both chuckle, because what Ashley meant to say was 'yes' and Kyla knows it.  
They get each other so well sometimes. Even when Ashley was so far gone, Kyla could still read her - every line memorized, passages taken to heart.  
And Ashley is lucky. So fucking lucky and she finally appreciates it. So damn thankful and it peels back the wounds, opens them up to the world and Ashley is not too surprised to find a tear or two sliding down her face.  
She holds onto Kyla a little tighter. And, like always, her sister returns the sentiment.  
Words still not said, but maybe they don't truly need to.

Maybe they are saying it all, every day of this new life.  
Maybe that's all they've been saying to each other all along.

Madison is in the tent first, complaining a bit about her feet hurting. Then Kyla proceeds to leave as well, yawning. Aiden asks Spencer if she is ready to turn in and she says something to him softly, something that Ashley cannot hear.  
Or doesn't want to hear.  
She stays there on the ground, getting colder, watching those stars and being grateful for a good sister and for getting clean after years of being metaphorically underwater.  
She can't worry about-

_About what though? How can I know? All I've got is thoughts, not facts. All I've got is a feeling and I can't trust that... can I?_

-she can't worry about Spencer.

She is there, though, faint gaze felt like a tickle along sensitive skin and Ashley resists a shudder that rattles within.

"Did you enjoy the hike?" Spencer questions, voice so low and oddly close.  
Ashley shuts her eyes, blocking the heavens from view.  
"It was nice. Did you enjoy it?"  
"I've, uh, had better... but it was alright."  
It is such a strange comment, one that Ashley isn't sure how to respond to, and there it is again - the sensation that a game is being played and Ashley cannot figure out the strategy. And she isn't sure she wants to.  
It bothers her in her dreams. It spooks her in the daylight. It causes her fingers to fidget and to ache, they curl instinctively - seeking out what used to be there for the taking, something quick to curb her wandering thoughts.  
And Spencer makes all thoughts wander, makes them ramble and trip and careen.  
Spencer makes Ashley's insides hurt, phantom jabs and mysterious bruises left in their wake.  
And that can't be good for anyone.

"Sleep well, Ashley." Right by her ear and Ashley's eyes squeeze shut even tighter, squeeze the ability to talk out of her and leave her painfully silent as Spencer walks away.

_I can't trust what I am feeling. I can't. I can't._

Feelings, though, cannot be curtailed for long.  
They have a way of making themselves known and Ashley should know better.  
She should face it all head-on. That's what Tammie and all those doctors and all those nurses would say. That's what the new Ashley should be saying, should be screaming at the top of her lungs.

But, more than that, Ashley wants to open up here eyes once more and find Spencer still there.

And that is what terrifies Ashley most of all.

/ / /

**TBC**


	6. don't you let it break, be careful

_Though leaves are many, the root is one/Through all the lying days of my youth  
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun/Now I may wither into the truth._

_-__**The Coming of Wisdom With Time, W.B. Yeats **_

A myriad of poetry and it is that one that greets her every morning. As she wakes before all the others - again and again - just her and the dawn. Sometimes bright and cool. Sometimes hazy and humid. Sometimes it is still too dark and her own eyes waver, beg for a little more sleep. Sometimes she has missed the cresting of the sun, missed the moment where it replaces all the dusky colors and takes over the sky.

She runs these words along her tongue silently, liking how they feel against her lips even as they remain unspoken.  
For she is the embodiment of this poem, faded photographs of every minute she spent passed out or fucking around...  
'Lying days of my youth' and Ashley knows it to be true.  
And here she sits, at some KOA campground in New Mexico and a sleeping sister not too far away and a trio of people who mystify her as much as they draw her near lurk in those water-proof shadows, and she is withering quite steadily towards truth.

_It's been a long time coming, though. It's been a __**long**__ time coming._

One last shake of those leaves. One last turn of the petals towards that ever-giving light.  
One last hurrah in a car, on this trip, with these people, upon this road.  
One last lie to suffice a lifetime of upcoming honesty.

_It's been a long time coming, hasn't it?_

Maybe it is looking at Kyla's face, peaceful in slumber, young and clear - not a blemish that cannot be cleaned up. And Ashley has seen her own face, lines that shouldn't be there at all, oh they used to taunt and tease - they spoke so harshly to any gaze, especially her own.  
But she wears them well now.  
Not with pride, but with acceptance. Ashley accepts where she once smiled, whether it was real or not. Ashley accepts where she once furrowed her brow in consternation, whether it was from something that seemed important at the time or from something truly of consequence.

Maybe she is accepting that she is older. No longer that fairy-tale child. No longer that bitter teenager. No longer that strung-out girl at every party.  
Maybe she is accepting the actual Ashley these days.

"And here I thought I was going to be the early bird of the day."

Madison's voice is light and sleepy still, tone warm with dreams and such. Ashley doesn't mind it so much, Madison's voice. It is nice. It is simple and open and sure.  
That is how Madison always comes off, too.  
Simple - not in a negative way, not like that at all - but at ease and never hiding a thing.  
Madison may know how to play, but it doesn't mean the girl wants to.  
She'd rather be blunt and Ashley can appreciate that.  
It doesn't make her gut twist. It doesn't make her nerves jump and quake.  
Madison is not Spencer.  
Not in the slightest.

The girl shuffles over and plops down beside Ashley, sliding her a sweet grin - one without the usual heaviness of flirtation.  
And, since it is morning and Ashley feels the boldness that comes with her moments of brief solitude, she appraises the girl beside her.  
Ashley takes in unfamiliar curves and mussed up hair and a face devoid of make-up.  
Madison yawns, letting the action tilt her sideways, right into Ashley's shoulder. And she leans there, for an endless second, then gently nudges.

"Like what you see?"

And the flirtation returns, that grin going from sweet to seductive like flicking a light switch.  
And Ashley must be having a good break of dawn, really, because she just chuckles - and it sounds good to her own ears and she knows it sounds good to Madison, because the girl softly laughs in return - and she nudges Madison back.

Playful. Simple. Open. Easy without negating right-ness.

And maybe honesty isn't so bad. Maybe being present won't be so hard... or as difficult as Ashley once imagined it to be. Maybe youth is overrated after-all, just a blip on the screen, and you soon find yourself older.  
And hopefully wiser.

They sit there, watching the sun rise higher and higher, making sporadic comments about nothing at all.  
Madison stays there against her shoulder.  
And Ashley does not ask her to move.

/ / /

They stop in a town called Santa Rosa, all of them hungry and most of them pondering if a night at a motel would be breaking the rules of this trip or not.  
Aiden excitedly mentions that Route 66 is here and he wants his picture taken next to the sign. Ashley recalls their brief conversation about Kerouac and the boy winks at her, like he knows she remembers. Like he knows, for that second, that she heard all about his beat poet daydreams and did not forget, did not disregard. Like it matters to him more than he might let on.  
Spencer catches their exchange and tilts her head, posture merely curious but eyes somewhat suspicious.

_Like a scolding teacher. Like an over-protective mother._

And, again, Ashley is left not knowing how to respond - torn between wanting to grin at the internal analogies and wanting to look away quickly.  
She opts for a little bit of both, a shy half-smile and eyes to the ground.

"Can we eat now? Please?" Kyla whines. And now Ashley cannot hold back her smile, feeling as it tugs on her lips and flies free as a bird. It's really rather lovely.  
"If you behave, you can have a toy with your happy meal, Ky..."  
"Oh shut up. I'm hungry. I want food. I'll complain if I want to."  
"That much is apparent."

Kyla hits her, lightly, on the arm and they share a bemused stare. It makes Kyla's eyes dance with happiness and it lights up the world around them. Ashley likes it. A lot.  
Madison pops into their sisterly bubble, grabbing both of their hands.

"Come along, ladies. Aiden asked the guy at the station and has found us a place to eat... and then we are going to see a famous highway or something."

Madison tugs on them both and Kyla goes along willingly, beaming with thoughts of eating, but Ashley holds back and walks along at her own pace.  
The SUV is parked to the side and Aiden is walking backwards, chatting to Madison and Kyla - explaining the significance of a stretch of cracked and imperfect pavement.  
Spencer is just a couple of feet ahead of Ashley, arms lazily swinging back and forth.  
But Ashley notices that the distance between them is getting more and more narrow, from two feet to a foot, from a foot to inches.  
And, gradually, they are walking side by side.  
Their quiet, though, is always so damn loud. Their silence is always so thick.  
And they don't know how to stop it from being that way.

But they don't know how to start up something new either.

Ashley thinks a lot of things as they walk together and separately at the same time.  
She thinks of a cool blue gaze across a table. She thinks of the heat from a leg too close. She thinks of a boyfriend just ahead of them and of the history that everyone here carries - all of them Atlas with their own personal worlds to lift up - and she thinks of wicked longings, passing from amber liquid to knowing whispers left in a girl's wake.  
And she wonders if Spencer thinks of these things, too.

"You should smile more often, you know... It looks good on you." Spencer says, looking at her own feet as they stir up dust, keeping this timid confession far enough away as to not be fully seen by anyone else.  
Maybe not even seen by Ashley herself.  
You'd have to be watching and waiting to catch an admission like this one, fluttering of butterfly wings before your eyes and then gone - a beautiful sight that disappears too swiftly.

And 'torn' must be her new middle name, because she wants to move her arm and press it gently against Spencer's arm, feel the skin as they move in tandem. She wants to make it more than random things and once-in-a-while mornings.  
But she also wants to shut it down, lock it away as unclassifiable and unsolved - Spencer, a girl one cannot fathom and a girl that no one can claim.  
Certainly not Ashley.

The gut twists. The nerves jump and quake.

And with Aiden giving a shout, the decision is made for the both of them.  
Spencer jogs ahead and his arm goes around her waist and they are the first through the Comet II diner doors.

/ / /

Everyone is now memorialized along Kerouac's highway, black tar running rampant behind each face and desert lands on either side.  
They learn that some of 'The Grapes of Wrath' film was shot here in 1940, back when the Depression wasn't a distant thing and in the subconscious of every mind was the terror that you might starve. You might lose your home. You might lose your life.  
They take a tour of a Route 66 car museum, which Aiden loved and the rest of them tolerated.  
They check out Puerto de Luna and Madison seems enthralled, whereas Aiden looks around with a bored stare. And Spencer makes Madison translate the guideposts back to Spanish, each time met with silly glee on both sides. And Kyla takes pictures of every single thing, claiming that she will make a scrapbook for everyone when they get back to California.

And the forgo camping for a night.  
And they find the cheapest motel they can, checking for things like bugs or cigarette burns on the sheets and working toilets.  
While Aiden says they should all share one room and cut down on the cost, Spencer and Madison both look put out by that idea.  
And Ashley tends to agree with the two women, even though she keeps it to herself.  
She can barely sleep as it is.  
And being that close to Spencer, with walls to hold them in and bathrooms too small...

_Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all._

The night moves in again, as they discard take out cartons and the four friends chat amicably for hours as Ashley listens in.  
They talk about jokes that Ashley has not heard. They talk about dates that Ashley was not around for. They talk about college and parties and games and bad grades.  
They talk about their world, taking it off their backs and setting it down for a little bit.  
And Ashley keeps hers right where it is, as usual.  
It makes her feel weary, sometimes... Sometimes, like right now, like tonight, with her sister laughing and Madison recounting some tall tale and Aiden interjecting and Spencer teasing - it makes Ashley feel older.  
And not in the best of ways.  
And that poem has left the dawn, where it is meant to be and where it is meant to shine.

Now it is a murky thing and Ashley doesn't know what to do with herself. It's strange and remarkable how fast she can slip from the uneven ground of confidence and right back into the mire of her own washed-out life. And with these new eyes, it always looks like so far to fall.  
And with this new body, it always **feels** like so far to fall.

And the way back up again always seems so hard.

She knows her silence has not gone unnoticed. She can feel the back and forth glances of her sister, ever the worrier and ever the protector.  
She can feel, to a much lesser degree, the lowered gaze of Madison - but that one is filled up with less concern and more interest than anything.  
It's that third stare, though, that beats so relentlessly - tap, tap, tap along the skull and asking for entrance once more, eager for a sunrise all their own again - and Ashley can't take it.  
Not tonight.  
Because she is weary, yes, and she is tired and she has lived for so very long now - shards of a billion lifetimes lodged under the surface of her skin and they all pierce, they all make her bleed just a bit more than the day before.  
And, tonight, she can't think of being young because those childish days are like a broken record - the tune just skips and makes her want to weep.  
And, tonight, she can't run back to that circle of addicts who became as close as family, can't hide behind those therapist couches and listen to Tammie's bad music.  
She can't call her father tonight, wherever he may be... Ashley can't call out to her mother tonight and find her cool palm against her forehead... And she can't keep looking for Kyla to save her, but she just can't save herself tonight.  
Not tonight.

"I need to stretch my legs some. Want to join me, Ashley?"

Spencer darts an arctic glare to the floor, which only Ashley sees, a bolt of blue that could burn you. Aiden yawns some and reaches out for the blonde's hand, but the gesture is almost callously ignored.  
Kyla is watching Ashley like a hawk with a mouse, but with no sign of malice or of making a meal of her - curious and cautious, all for that sibling who can't figure out how to fully exist again.  
But Madison tosses out a rope whether she knows it or not and Ashley flails for anything solid right now.

And what used to keep her grounded is the very thing that kept her bound and chained, kept her so far down that she was lost.  
And what she wants to keep her steady these days is something far less tangible than the waves of medicated wonder... who she wants these days is about as sure as air beneath one's feet...

"Yea, sure."

/ / /

You get older.  
But wiser is never a guarantee.

And you tell yourself to let go before you get too close.  
And you remind yourself that these games are not for you, they never were.  
You don't roll yourself around like a third wheel.  
You won't be the hush of stunted yearning, not for anyone.

You are older.  
And, hopefully, wiser.

But there are no guarantees.

/ / /

**TBC**


	7. put your body next to me

_We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us. - __**François Rabelais**__**(1494 – 1553) French Renaissance writer**_

Ashley's arms ache with all she has reached out for - time to turn back upon the clock, shouts to stop getting louder, an embrace that would mean something, a rush that would never end - her muscles have grown weak with all she has wanted.

And all she, too, has been denied.

Because the minutes never retraced their steps and the yelling only came closer to her covered-up ears and the bodies that she woke up next to never stuck around and that wonderful... horrible... unexplainable feeling that tripped through her blood-stream...

It always ended.  
Leaving her bereft and lonely and defeated, as if every night was the honeymoon and every break of day was the divorce, those highs were like smoke.  
Hints of it everywhere, but cruelly absent once you really looked for it.

But, perhaps, that is the nature of every single person. Seeking out what you lost, searching for what might have been - remaking the past to suit your needs or planning like mad to fix your future, trying to sort out those things that none of us can control.  
Perhaps that is everyone.  
Not just Ashley.  
Not just addicts.  
Perhaps everyone is addicted to something, even if it is deceptively legal and common.  
Addicted to lying. Addicted to drama. Addicted to the chase and never the capture.

Ashley wonders if that is what Madison sees every day of her life, walking into classrooms or the cafeteria, star-studded smile turned on.  
Waiting to see who takes the bait and who lingers the longest, maybe Madison is all caught up in the wanting... not so much the getting.  
Or, maybe, that is just how she likes to be seen.

Because no one is totally as they appear these days.  
Not Madison. Not Spencer. Not even Aiden. Probably not even Kyla.  
And definitely not Ashley.

"You ever notice how motel parking lots seem so seedy at night? During the day, they just look boring and quiet, but once it gets dark..."

And Ashley knows this better than most, because she has been that pale figure at the edge of lots like these. She's been that girl, meeting up with names to faces she did not know, at the age of twenty-two and those early stages of jittery cravings were marking her like a tattoo.  
She would sneak into rooms and wake up wasted, with barely a memory as to how it happened or for how long.  
When she was flying, the broken glass that is always present on these patches of asphalt looked like the fragments of stars.  
But when she landed again, reality settled in like a bullet.

_Yea, I know exactly what she means. I know._

"They're all like that." Ashley quietly replies, stuffing her hands into her jeans pockets. Madison's gaze stays elsewhere, for which Ashley is pathetically grateful.  
Because this is not a conversation she can have, not yet, not with someone new and not with someone who isn't in the same rickety boat as she - paddling for their life, but still too fucking tired to reach that shore.

And Madison must not need to ask, must not need to pester and prod, must not need to demand answers to things that Ashley can only guess at.  
What Madison needs is so plain to the eye - you could be blind and catch it.  
So, when Ashley feels the hand slide over her cheek-

_...warm and smooth and not so much gentle as cautious..._

-and feels that hot breath coast along her lips-

_...there's a promise there, yes, but not the kind that dreams are built on..._

-Ashley can't claim to be innocent of this coming. Because she saw it play out hundreds of times along Madison's face and she heard it sing out with every word the girl spoke.  
Madison is reaching out, too.  
Eager to taste what is, ultimately, not so much unattainable as it is just unavailable.  
Not because it is wrong. Never because of that.  
It just isn't right, either.

The kiss is actually quite stunning. And Ashley can't lie - she responds to it.  
It holds just so and it pulls back slowly - it tastes like someone who knows what they are doing and Ashley knows it is not herself with that talent, it's all Madison.  
It could even be addicting, kisses like that. For a second, Ashley is reminded of a shot of bourbon - how it burns even as it soothes, how it makes you drunk without even realizing it - and that is Madison, too.  
Madison could easily be someone's drug of choice, lips far less like sugar and much more like liquor, taking over a person's evenings just like that.

Madison steps back and seems to sheepishly grin and a lock of hair falls into her eyes, making her look younger somehow. More like a tender child, less like a seductress.  
And, quite without warning, Ashley grins a little bit as well - and she means it. It's not awkward or forced. It just occurs naturally.  
And then Madison is rolling her eyes, albeit in an amused fashion, with the faintest hint of a blush in these flickering parking lot lights.

"Well, at least I got to lay one on you, right?"

This isn't some game of spin the bottle or five seconds in a closet.  
This isn't some frat party on campus or a drunken fumble in the shadows.  
This is just two people, reaching out... but for different things, for different moments... maybe even for different people all together, in a parking lot in New Mexico and with another day of traveling before them - they reach out for the elusive unknown and find each other instead.

And Ashley knows she isn't as strong as she wants to be, not by a long shot.  
She is not a tower and she is not a tree.  
If you push her, she bends to the point of breaking still. The foundations are still being built and the stones are still being placed down - she is still a work in progress  
Maybe strength isn't how far you've come, though.  
Maybe it is the fact that you keep going.

And the arms still tremble, but Ashley opens them up.  
And it'll never be quite what Madison wants, but it could be something just as good.

They hug like friends might.

And, maybe, that is what they will become before this journey is done.

/ / /

Aiden longs for what is passing him by, that's what Ashley thinks as she watches the couple toss in bags and put on sunglasses and not talk.  
Maybe he is more of a sixties poet than anyone could ever know - restless with dreams, anxious with global worries, tripping up over a pretty girl who just does not get it, just does not get **him** at all.  
Maybe that is what he is addicted to, as the doors shut and the engine turns and rubber meets the white lines, maybe Aiden is addicted to a time that is long gone.  
A place where men rolled their cigarettes. A moment where the road was achingly free.  
A second where a guy like him could fall in love with a girl like Spencer - and she returned it, blue eyes blazing in the summer sun.

That's what Ashley thinks, when she thinks of the two of them at all - which is really too much and really not enough. And she'd give just about anything to have a book to read right now.  
Her fingers are locked painfully, rigid against her knees as she sits so very still, and if she moves them - even just an inch - then they will set to tapping.  
And it won't be quiet. And it won't be subtle.  
She'll be beating out discordant notes all the way to Texas... if she lets them move.  
So, Ashley keeps them frozen, like her life depends upon it.  
And maybe her life does depend on this lack of movement. Maybe her existence has been whittled down to this bit of non-action - one breath, slow and steady and silent, and nothing more.  
Because what would happen if she moved and did not regulate her body to its normal processes?

_What would happen indeed...?_

There used to be no regulations at all. She would bounce just like a silver ball in the slot - shot out and hitting as many flashing lights as possible, endless joints and bitter fluids and red-rimmed eyes.  
And then she'd do it all again.  
And again.  
What was once a method of coping became a habit. And what was once a habit became a lifestyle. If you wanted strung-out chic, Ashley could give it to you - in spades.  
Hollow cheeks and pale skin, designer clothes that had seen better days - she'd stagger in and close the places down, one party to the next.  
Sometimes, she was the party. Sometimes, she was the ride. Sometimes, she was the dealer and the user - the player and the played, grinning as strangers wrecked her place and left dirty notes along her hips.  
Ashley didn't have rules, not truly. She just had binges and black-outs.  
And if you were there, then you were there. And if you left, then you were gone.  
And if she lived, then she lived.  
And if she died... well, then... that would be that.  
Ashley didn't care - she was content to be blasted from that cannon and with the knowledge that she might not wake up the next day.  
Or so she kept telling herself, kept murmuring to her battered soul, kept putting that notion on repeat.

Now, though, Ashley is full of restraint and full of hesitancy.  
One step forward, two steps back. Or, to be more precise, one step forward and then stop all together. Stop and don't move at all, just like this very moment as Aiden drives and Madison places one foot out the window of the passenger seat and Kyla steals Ashley's MP3 player as she sits in the back seat.  
Keep still and stay reserved, that's all Ashley can seem to do right now, with Spencer beside her - quiet and sullen and distant Spencer, who stares at the highway as it flies by.  
And Ashley breathes. And Ashley keeps her fingers in a fixed position.

And Ashley tries her best to not imagine what might happen if she were to move, if she were to flex and stretch out, if she were to cross this chasm of leather material and rest fingertips on someone else's thigh other than her own.

_I think I know what would happen. I think I know pretty damn well._

What could happen, the 'what if?' that lingers between them, it tantalizes Ashley's senses in such a familiar way. It rocks and rolls in her system with alarming clarity. It pulses with such beautiful allure.

That's why she can't move. Because if she were to push past these boundaries - the ones that Spencer holds up with a boyfriend and with looks that mean more than they let on, the ones that Ashley holds up with a year spent under lock-and-key and with passions that dive all too well into the deep end - if she were to shove all these restrictions aside, if she were to throw caution to the wind, if she were to trust these fluttering new feelings...

It just might shatter the world.  
Or it just might shatter Ashley's world, the one she is trying to rebuild and the one that she just can't lose this time.  
Not even for the promise of affection. Not even for the whisper of more than that.

And Aiden's eyes do not look back today. And Ashley's eyes stay off the blonde, too.  
And maybe the two of them are more alike than anyone else.  
In this moment, maybe they are one in the same.

/ / /

She wonders if stars want for anything. She wonders if the cosmos strains with longing like humans do - dust and neon light for hands, palms upturned and asking.

But what could nebulas and supernovas ask for that they don't already have?  
Because to want is to imply that you don't have.  
To ache is to say that you need.  
To hunger for something means that you've been starved up to now.  
And Jupiter is not filled up with desire. Saturn is not begging for more rings. Pluto might slipped out of the solar system, but it still turns against the dark night.

Amarillo holds them for an evening, providing dry ground and wide skies and cowboys around every corner. Tents get pitched and food gets eaten and the tension is still there - but it simmers more than anything.  
Aiden finally looks at Spencer, even if the blonde barely looks back.  
Ashley finally allows her gaze to wander as well. To wander the jaw-line then dart away, to rush over the mouth and then to turn elsewhere.  
Kyla mentions the Palo Duro Canyon for tomorrow morning and Madison, surprisingly, agrees. The two girls joke some about private things and Ashley isn't really listening, but Madison's hand finds her arm - gripping it in laughter - and, once more, Ashley finds a smile toying with her own lips.  
Glad to see happiness. Glad to feel some of it herself.  
And, right then and there, glad to be alive.  
Glad that, for all her trying, she didn't succeed in killing herself - she isn't six feet under, she isn't a pile of ashes in a jar, she isn't a dead sister and a statistic on some doctor's chart.

She's in Texas, thinking about the heavens above and the endless void beyond and the possible pining of intergalactic realms.  
And she is smiling at a private joke all her own, glad to be smiling at all, glad to be smiling and meaning it for a change.

The hours move on, each person slowly drifting to rest - Kyla and her hug good-night, Madison rubbing her eyes, Aiden and his silent wave.  
And the planets align, up in the sky, ducks so much in a row that one might have planned it - but no one did, not really.  
Ashley is still up and so is Spencer. That's all there is to it.  
And no one planned it.  
And if they did, maybe it is best to pretend that they didn't.

"Madison likes you."  
"I like her, too."

Spencer chuckles and lets her head fall down, hair blocking her face from view. But Ashley does not look away, does not avert her attention from the girl by her side.  
Right now, the whole of creation can wait.

"Madison is my friend and she is awesome, but...uh, just be careful, okay? She's not big on relationships or anything."

And Ashley's hand is flat upon the dirt, pressing down with intent, a support if she needs it and an anchor if she is caught floating off.  
And Spencer's head stays down, strands of gold running like a river in a shaft of moonlight.  
It is a lovely moment. It is the kind of thing that gets etched into memory, never to dull and never to wax nor wane.

"I don't like her that way, so... it's all good."

A breath. And Ashley is met with that blue stare, head against a knee, the two of them watching one another.  
Watching and waiting and wanting, all at the same time, under all those hidden worlds - the ones past the Milky Way and the ones that they might find within each other.  
If they dare. If they ever decide to dare.

"Oh. Okay then."

And no one planned it.  
And if they did, maybe it is best to pretend that they didn't.

/ / /

It might have been a dream, but Ashley thinks Spencer held her hand - for a minute or two - as stars spoke about ecstasy.

/ / /

**TBC**


	8. and it's hard to know what you want

**As you can see, I have removed the last chapter. Why? Because I did not like it. I liked parts of it and wanted to change aspects of it to suit what I originally saw in my head. Sometimes I sit down and start writing and then... it is not at all what I wanted to do. And I try to convince myself that it is, when it is not. Blah blah blah. No one cares, but I thought those who are reading this might want an explanation. There will be sweetness - but, first, there must be the not-so-sweet.**

**It's how I roll.**

/ / / / / / /

_The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. -__**John Muir**_

And you'd have to believe it as your eyes adjust, as your vision clears with the first rush of dawn, as you find your feet walking ahead of the others - still asleep and still waking up - and the recollections that you cling to and the remembrances that you fear... All of it falls away in the face of a beauty that came long before you took your initial breath.  
Beauty that is here now, as you stand and gather air in your lungs, lines of color - finger painted rocks being hit by the pink light of sunrise, blue lingering like the dusk and the sky like crystal... Beauty that will outlast you, will continue to be firm even as your skin sags and your bones crack and as you fade from view.

And will you leave a part of your soul here? Will you leave a piece of yourself here, on this trip, lurking along a trail or in a back seat? Will the ghost of your fingertips still trace the lines on that map, marking the way for someone else?

Or will you just be forgotten again, as so many before you surely have?  
Just another pair of feet. Just another wanderer. Just another person caught between childhood and adulthood, just another wounded solider with tears to bear, a cross to carry, a load to wearily set down as you face perfection.

_This is forever. This is permanent. And nothing else is._

And you can't help but find solace in your own frailties when faced with such realizations.

/ / /

The first month of rehab felt like a century, minutes dragged by so slowly and she tried to make a break for it twice - meaty arms of security hauling her back, her vicious words ignored and her flailing fists did not make a dent.  
And the nurses would shake their heads sadly. And the doctors would make notes, eyeing her like she was a wild animal.

Maybe she was one at that point.

Unkempt and desperate, stalking her room like a lion does a cage, tugging on her flesh because she couldn't get a hit.  
Because her insides needed **something**, something she was being forced to deny. And she would pace. And she would curse. And she would claw at her body - hating it and mourning it, trying to hold onto whatever was left... which wasn't much anymore.  
She was already dying, she had to be.  
And in that sterile room, in that place with a bunch of other wasted refugees from a war that no one sees, Ashley thought that death was closer than before.

That soul of hers was weak and she didn't know how to bring it back to life.  
She didn't believe in forever or in lovely things. She didn't have faith in anyone at all.  
Trust came in a bottle. Kindness came in a line upon the table.  
And happiness, just like everything else, could be bought and sold.

That soul of hers was tattered, beaten for years, and it wanted to give up.  
Give in. Give out. Just give up.  
That soul of hers was a punching bag, all the sweet and tender places were used to her fists - the girl who wanted her family back and the girl who stole glances at other girls - she got used to wearing those colors of black and blue.  
That girl and that soul - matching wounds - they wanted to cease being if it meant no more pain.

And that first month of rehab was like hell, her body like those tormented people in Dante's Inferno - and she caught a glimpse of something eternal, alright...

An eternity of feeling empty. An eternity of feeling broken. That's the forever Ashley once saw, sitting with her thin back pushed against the wall and her knees drawn up tight, watching with blood-shot eyes as the lights got turned out on another night in rehab.

But maybe it had to be that way. That's what Ashley thinks these days, what she tells herself these days.

Maybe she had to reach the very bottom before she could attempt to climb back up again.

Maybe everything had to fall apart in order to be put right once more.

/ / /

Red stains their shoes as they trek around, as the sun gets higher in the sky, and they all seem to collectively stop at one ridge - Spencer taking pictures and Kyla doing the same. Madison peeks over the edge and downward, hands on her hips. Aiden stretches his legs, one than the other.  
And Ashley leans her head back, feels the heat on her face, and closes her eyes.  
It feels like peace, if only for a second or two. And she'll take it this time, take this moment for all it is worth.

"Hey, no going back to sleep!" Madison playfully calls out and Ashley smiles, but keeps her eyes shut.  
This is rest, but not the kind where she is avoiding the universe.  
This is no heavy slumber, not anymore.  
This is a moment of tranquility.  
And Ashley isn't ashamed to say that she craves it, isn't afraid to say that she has earned it.

By the time noon rolls around, they've covered tons of trails and walked through bright green fields - yellow flowers swaying in the breeze - and gone up, up, up.  
Steadily climbing to where the morning fog lifts off and the day warms up and they are all sweating now.  
A new set of footsteps greet them, fellow hikers with heavy back-packs, and they all give a greeting of some sort.  
Like when you see motorcyclists wave to one another, there is a shared comradery along the paths. You've shared the journey whether you know it or not.

"Hey, if you guys are sticking around this area, you need to check out the river. It's down by the west of end of the canyon. Really cool place. And if you keep things quiet, you can camp there... Technically, it's illegal to do so..." The guy says with a grin.  
"But we did it anyway." The girl by his side finishes, grinning as well.  
"Just clean up after you go and no one is the wiser." That's the guy's parting advice as they move on down this particular trail.  
Aiden turns to all of them, raising an eyebrow and a slow smile spreads across his face.

"Want to break some laws?"

The Ashley of old, she broke laws, ones much more serious than this one.  
She would slip around dank and dismal places, always in the name of breaking rules.  
At first, to be a part of something.  
In the end, to be a part of nothing.  
But this is a simple bending of the truth - it is not an earth-shattering secret that would be kept under wraps... until it cannot be hidden at all - this is a night spent by a lazy river with new friends and steadfast family, with mysterious thirsts and never-ending nature.

"Let's do it." Kyla says with a big grin, eager to be just a little naughty.  
"That's what I like to hear, bad-girl Kyla..." Madison says with a matching grin, throwing her arm about the girl's shoulders. They smile happily at each other.  
"Spence?" Aiden questions.  
And the blonde allows the softest of smiles, one that Aiden cannot help but respond to in kind. Ashley can't help herself either. But she turns her mirrored reflection to the burnt ground beneath her feet, the only safe place she can let this feeling land, the only way she can set it loose but keep it from hurting anyone.

Because it wasn't a dream, though she did try to convince herself otherwise as the evening wore on to dawn.

_A pressure - trembling, but real - against her hand.  
And those blue eyes shut once more, head still slanted against that knee. And as if she, too, cannot sustain such an intense instant... Ashley's own gaze closes.  
Fingers thread timidly through her own.  
And a cloud covers the moon, bathing the two of them in darkness.  
Not the kind that would harm them, though. Not the kind that would kill them.  
It is the kind that gives them somewhere to be together. For now. Just for now.  
And the pressure shifts to a hold, a grasping so brief, and Spencer whispers something.  
Something that Ashley cannot hear, but can fully understand anyway.  
And then they break away._

But a thin line connects them now and there is no going back.

_It wasn't a dream at all._

"Yea, why not? We'll make a night of it." Spencer agrees, her eyes flashing with happiness, the solemnness of the previous day gone. And it leaves that blue a little brighter. And it makes that smile a little easier. And it makes guys like Aiden want to hold on tighter. And it makes friends like Kyla and Madison laugh a little louder.

And it makes a girl like Ashley fall a little harder than she should.

And the line tugs. And they see one another when everyone else is looking away.  
And Spencer faces the canyon once more, Aiden by her side.  
And Ashley starts walking again, on her own.  
And the line pulls and grows taut with an unspeakable tension.

_Because it wasn't a dream, not in the slightest._

/ / /

Palo Duro keeps them quiet and keeps them tucked away from prying eyes, keeps them from being caught as they do not heed man-made restrictions. The tents are pitched and the food swiftly eaten. They've all fallen into a sort of routine.

Kyla is warm and steady by her side, the two of them seemingly removed from whatever quiet conversation Aiden, Spencer and Madison are having across the way - their respective faces bathed in barely-there firelight, shadows and flames, hand gestures and bobbing heads.

And the river sounds a little bit like a wave, out there in the night, one continuous ripple of water and it lulls Ashley like a child - her eyes blink slowly and she finds her body leaning without her consent against Kyla's shoulder.

"Ash?"  
"Hmm?"  
"You tired?"

And she is tired, but not a way that anyone could ever comprehend. This is an old exhaustion, built up from so many hours spent awake - running on nothing but fumes and deceit, out the back-door of clubs and into the paint-peeled houses, sprawled on lawns as the police rolled in.

Ashley is so damn tired, but it is just now catching up to her.

"Yea. A little bit."  
"Why don't you go on then? Don't stay up for me or anything..."  
"Who says I am staying up for your sake?"

And Ashley smirks somewhat, finding even her own lips moving lazily, and Kyla gasps in mock offense. But that quickly dissolves into a pleased grin and a giggle.

"I like this, you know. I like... I like having you back, Ash."

And, just like that, Ashley is awake.  
And she looks at her sister, watches how warm that smile gets and how genuine it is upon her face, watches the years get stripped away and is left with Kyla - funny and stumbling Kyla, a bundle of energy running alongside Ashley as they played and as they fought and as they drifted from one another.  
She sees the first time she came home drunk and Kyla found her, asking why they couldn't go to that movie and why did Ashley have the curtains shut and why was Ashley so mad.

_"Why'd you yell at me? I didn't do anything!"  
"Just get the hell out of here, Ky."  
"But what about the movie? You said-"  
"Another time, okay? I can't... not right now... I can't... I don't... I just can't, okay?"_

She sees the first time she didn't come home at all and Kyla stalked up to her in school the next day, angry and worried and making a scene in front of everyone.

_"I had to cover for you, Ash! Mom was already in a bad mood..."  
"Let her find out. I don't care."  
"Ash, what is going on with you? You can tell me, okay? I won't tell anyone else, I promise..."  
"Leave it, Ky. Look, I'll be there tonight. But I, uh... I gotta go right now, okay?"  
"But Ash-"  
"I __**said **__I have to go."_

Ashley sees every single time she said she'd come home and didn't. Every single time she said she'd be there and wasn't.  
All right there in Kyla's face, it's all there, and Ashley can barely stand it.  
And the unmistakable heat of tears hits her skin, trailing down without a sound - a different kind of river, so silent and still so strong.  
Kyla's grin fades as the words float out, hushed and grief-stricken, only for the two of them to hear and to grapple with.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

But Kyla holds her. Holds her and subtly rocks her and says rambling things into Ashley's hair - giving forgiveness as simply as one opens their eyes - and Ashley isn't sure she has earned this moment.  
Not yet. Maybe she never truly can. Maybe that girl won't ever accept it. Maybe that soul won't ever believe it.

But, maybe one day, that will change.  
Maybe, one day, Ashley will give the same forgiveness to herself.

It is never forgotten, though.

Everyone says to forgive and forget.  
She might be able to manage the former, someday... but never the latter.  
Those memories of how she used to get by, how she used to kill the time and waste the day, the myriad of ways she played at being someone else - someone with parents who loved each other, someone who still had their dreams intact, someone who was like everyone else - she never forgets.

She taps her fingers.  
She reads a ton of books.  
She doesn't linger in the aisles, near those glass cases.

But she doesn't forget.  
Just like Ron never forgot his club-nights and his meth. Just like each and every person in rehab doesn't forget the pills or the alcohol or the sting of a needle pushing past flesh - Ashley does not forget.  
She covers and ignores. She keeps closing the door and resting her forehead against the surface, hoping that that is the last time she must do so.  
And it never is.

Ashley knows the distinct sound the second it reaches her ears - the metallic flick of a lighter and then the sight of the haunting blue flare of a flame. And Ashley knows the smell, how it hits her chest like a kick - it actually hurts, it actually takes her damn breath away - and her purchase upon Kyla becomes like a vice.

"I need... I need to go, okay? I need to **go**."

Ashley hears her own voice, hears how desperate it is and how scared it is and she loathes it.  
It's like a year did not occur in that place. It's like nothing has changed and she must run, must hide, must quickly stamp out the beast before it starts to beg and whine.

"I'll tell them to stop." Kyla insists in a harsh whisper.  
"No. No, don't do that... I don't want you to. I just have to get away. Just until, you know, just until it's over."  
"Let me **help**, Ash. Tell me how and I'll do it, whatever it is..."  
"Give me a flashlight so I don't get lost out here."

She is trying, god she is trying, and Kyla timidly smiles. And Ashley does much the same, taking the flashlight into hands that won't stop moving - gripping and tapping and clenching - and she walks away. She walks away before she cannot do so.  
Only seeing the edges of trees and just the rushing by of rocks, of the ground, of everything.  
And the river is nearby, still a midnight wave that forever rolls on, and Ashley goes there.  
She goes to the river and gulps up fresh air, inhales it to the point of feeling dizzy - trying to clear out the sweet scent of what she knows to be hash and replace it with anything else.

She couldn't let Kyla stop them. Because then there would have to be a reason and Ashley doesn't want to be the reason. Because there would be questions and Ashley does not want to divulge the answers. Because it would expose so much and Ashley isn't ready for that.

_Not yet. Not tonight._

She couldn't let Kyla stop them. Because Ashley is the addict and they are not. They've not lost years to every lit pipe. They've not thrown away people in the name of the chase. They've not masked every truth with another sip.  
For them, it is just some fun.  
For Ashley, it is the devil by her side.  
And she warned herself that this could happen - twenty-somethings on the open road, it was bound to pop up sooner or later - and she had hoped she could handle it, could sit there and see it in front of her, could almost taste it and not take a fucking bite.

But the crawling in her gut told her otherwise.  
And a year means nothing. And all that emoting and all that sorrow and all that work - it means nothing.  
Ashley wanted and, in wanting, she feels failure.  
So, she sits there by the river she cannot truly see and listens to it, attempting to drown out the voice inside of her head that says that this is just the beginning, that the real work is now at hand and she can stop fighting if she so desires.  
Ashley can lay down and let who she once was crush her.  
Or she can pick up her feet. She can just keep going, even if where she is going is a mystery.

_Day by day, day by day, day by fucking day..._

/ / /

A light weaves in and out of the murky surroundings, pulling Ashley's attention from some fixed point within, and she reckons it is Kyla.  
A worried Kyla, the only way Ashley can seem to leave her sister, and another pang of remorse calls out - battering her with wicked honesty.  
But it isn't Kyla.

And the line jerks. And the line reels them in, helpless.

Spencer collapses down beside her, taking no notice of Ashley's silence or of the fact that no space is left between them now - Spencer's barely covered thigh is pressed firmly to Ashley's own leg.

"You just left." Spencer states, the tone of her voice hazy with things that Ashley knows and things that Ashley can scarcely fathom.  
She swallows hard and does not flinch when that beam of light focuses on the side of her face. And she cannot respond, not tonight, not with all these things - familiar things and secretive things - so close, so horribly and amazingly close to bubbling over.  
"Ashleyyyy..." Spencer drawls out, the wasted notes so evident and Ashley's hands are turning into fists as Spencer leans in, dangerous breath brushing her ear-lobe - intoxicating and wrong, on more levels than can be counted.  
"Let's go for a swim."

And Spencer does not wait for a reply, grabbing and pulling on Ashley, laughing as the flashlight hits the ground - highlighting the removal of shorts and shoes, then bare feet walking haphazardly towards the water.  
When you are high, everything sounds like a good idea. All your thoughts are brilliant and you want to explain them, want to paint them, want to write them down and immortalize yourself.  
When you are high, you don't see the falling - you only see the flight.  
When you are high, what you yearn for doesn't seem so impossible or out of reach.  
Everything can be yours and you believe it.

And the line is shorter now, taking away the distance that they both rely on.

"You really are no fun, you know? I mean... we've got a** river**, Ashley... a river, just for you and I... c'mon and live a little..." Spencer says softly, the sentence punctuated by splashes and sighs and an underlying reckless kind of need.  
There are other addictions out here, not just Ashley's. There are other lies being told.  
There's a boyfriend back there, sleeping and hoping and wondering where it all went haywire.  
There are other rules being broken tonight.

Ashley reaches down slowly and turns off the flashlight.  
And the night swarms around them, just the two of them - away from the rest of the world, like they tend to do, stars too far away and the moon in-and-out of the heavens.  
And the river does not carry Spencer away, it reveals her.  
It washes away the pretense and leaves the blonde bold, leaves the blonde brave.  
And there, in one languid sweep of lunar illumination, Ashley sees all her demons and all her salvation - and she is set to shaking.

"I wish I had my camera..." Spencer echoes out, body so near, her shirt soaked through and water sliding unseen along her skin.  
"Why?" Ashley's voice is hoarse and weak to her own ears, saying all the stuff that beats along in her heart and all the terrors of her mind.  
"Because of you.

And Spencer's mouth is not reticent, but all-consuming, against her own.  
And Spencer has the flavor of everything right and everything wrong upon those lips.

And the line snaps as they collide.

/ / /

**TBC**


	9. i lost it all on my way down

_The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed.  
The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant . . . - __**Kate Chopin **_

But they teach you to confront the past, talk it down from the ledge you put it upon and wait for that hand to beckon you near. You'll spend days, months, years. You'll spend the rest of your life waiting, that's what they teach you.

Maybe you'll get a look. Maybe you'll get a word or two. Maybe you'll reach out to yourself and that other you will finally reach back. That's what they tell you to hope for, to work for.  
That's what they tell you to dream of when the dawn seems too far away and the night seems too damn close.

And the now is all about you, isn't it?

Not in a selfish way. Not in a self-centered way.  
But it is your feet on the floor and it is your hair in your face and it is your heart that beats like a drum and it is your fingers that twine around each other as you still shake those longings loose.  
Shake them loose and try to set them free. Try to set them free and be in the moment - on this road, leaving Texas behind and entertaining the flatlands of Oklahoma, staring at the dark clouds as they build in the distance.

_I can be in this moment. I can live here. I don't have to fall back or jump forward. I can just be._

Tethered to you, though, are all the things you ignore.  
Drifting above you like a kite, dipping and diving in the atmosphere, prettier than it truly is and father away than you want them to be.  
Like the hit you still miss.  
Like the family you still crave.  
Like the kiss you still taste.

And the now is all about you, isn't it?

In every way you want and in every way you despise, it is all about you.

/ / /

El Reno does not offer much, but like the middle of every journey - it is to be expected - a lull, with no trails to explore and no canyons to traverse, just a place off the interstate.

Madison points out the restaurant proclaiming that they are the 'proud makers of the world-famous Fried Onion Burger' and everyone seems to silently agree that this particular stop is worth their time.  
Kyla states that it better be amazing or she'll ask for a refund.  
And newspaper articles line the walls, showing off a massive meal and a special day and so forth, as they are greeted and seated and fitted with bibs.

"Are they for real?" Madison questions aloud, pointing to the red-and-white checked napkin now resting below her chin.  
"If it is messy, it must be good." Aiden replies happily as he leans back and extends his arm, letting it rest comfortably behind Spencer's shoulders. Like a half of a halo, an extension of his love, secure and quiet in its intention.  
Spencer, for her part, nods her head in agreement. And she smiles. And she pushes blonde hair back behind one ear.

Spencer is in the moment, a moment that Ashley cannot participate in.

And Ashley is fairly certain that she does not want to participate in it either.

Because their moments are over-lapping with increasing frequency and, unlike Aiden, their intentions are not so clear. Not so simple. Not so honest.  
And there is the past that Ashley is willing to focus on, all the wasted seconds with her jaw slack and her eyes glassy.  
And there is the past that Ashley isn't willing to deal with, at least not right now, not in El Reno as their food is placed down and bites are taken and comments are made.  
Not with Madison getting mustard on her chin and Kyla making fun of the girl and fries being thrown. Not with old men and women staring at the five of them, looks so cagey and stern.  
Not with Aiden's arm still hovering so naturally.  
Not with Spencer's blank joy, as flawless as it is unreal.  
Not with Ashley's own mind awash in mistakes made - recent and otherwise.

"Are you okay?" Kyla's faint voice, too soft for anyone else to hear, coasts into Ashley's consciousness.

_Am I okay? Will I be okay? Was I __**ever **__okay?_

"If I say I don't know... can we leave it at that?" Ashley answers, the smile slight and the eyes tired and the palms pressed together hard.  
And Kyla's nod is of understanding, but not without worry.  
And Ashley knows that her sister has a right to worry. Ashley is a worried, too.  
Because more than a tiny lie, held fast by a river and by moonlight and against wet lips, is the shock of what lingered beyond mutual desire - a sharp flavor as tangible as a fistful of musky earth. A punch to Ashley's gut, sudden and sweet, and if she could have mined that mouth for treasures other than flesh...

Ashley would have.  
In a heartbeat, she would have.

_No, I don't think I'll ever be okay._

/ / /

_It breathes as much as another person, this wanting thing between them, and so it takes up space. It takes up room and makes itself known.  
It is not whispering, not now.  
Now, it demands.  
And whatever shock that might travel through her brain is outweighed by sensation.  
The sensation of new-ness and hints of what could be._

_Or of what is - Spencer kisses lazily, a girl who needs no practice, and Ashley feels like she is stumbling to keep up.  
When stoned or drunk or obliterated, Ashley could manage such things.  
But being clean and sober has left her feeling like a novice in so many ways.  
This is but one._

_Still... Still, Ashley responds and whatever kept them apart just drifts down to nothing, the damp shirt pushing cooly onto Ashley's dry chest.  
And fingers crawl slowly up Ashley's arms, they trip higher and higher, further and further, until they clasp heavily along the back of Ashley's neck.  
They do not tug. They do not pull. They just rest there, growing hotter as each second goes by._

_And Ashley shudders as her own body moves, as she turns standing into an embrace, Spencer in her arms. Spencer's tongue probing and succeeding, reeling Ashley in with a moan.  
Her moan. Spencer's moan. Both of them swallowed up by the river and the nighttime and the rest of the world fast asleep._

_"God..." Spencer slips away in a rush, mouth bumping into Ashley's as she speaks, words moving as rapidly as the water all around them - a dreamy cascade of some hidden language, one that only the two of them know.  
"...this feel so fucking good, __**you**__ feel so good..."_

_And what is said only adds to the roar within Ashley's head, blood flooding her senses - like thunder, rolling and cracking the heavens - she cannot hear much more than the twin jumps of a pulse, hers and Spencer's.  
And, yet, there is more to this kiss. Winding its way into her system is something wonderfully familiar, something decadent coating this contact.  
The red light starts flashing in her mind's eye, no longer at yield and it is begging her to stop.  
Stop before all that is left is a head-on collision - broken and battered and oh so damned familiar..._

_Spencer is shaking and Ashley, for a second, tightens her arms.  
As if they are truly lovers. As if she can protect this girl she barely knows from everything.  
Even the ghosts in Ashley's body. Even the shadows in Spencer's own soul._

_For a second, they act like no one else matters and... for a second... no one else does matter._

_But the girl isn't just shaking, she is crying.  
And that red light is finally pushing its way into Ashley's vision, blaring out about the smoke that still clings to Spencer's silver-tinged hair and that has seductively whispered its way to the inside of Ashley's mouth.  
The spell breaks. And the line becomes miles and miles of steel.  
Ashley steps back and watches mutely as Spencer silently sobs, as shoulders tremble._

_"I... sorry, I... Just don't tell, __**please**__ don't tell... I don't know what is going on with me..." And bare feet against the rocks and mud carry the girl away, swaying and gasping with sadness and Ashley feels an incredible weight settle within her bones._

_Brick by brick, a house built of stolen impressions and fearful notions and nefarious yearnings lays down upon Ashley's form._

_And she just cannot shake it loose._

_And all along her teeth, taunting her in the spit, mocking her from branded lips - there is that first love, rearing its beautifully ugly head._

/ / /

Another night in a hotel, in a town that turns out its lights at exactly ten p.m., and Ashley notices that the clouds have finally settled in for the night.  
They build and build, carrying lightning in their midst, and so the rain falls in sheets.  
The soft glow of the lamp highlights every drop that runs down the window pane and Ashley traces them as they fall - Madison in the shower and Kyla flipping through television channels.

And Ashley wonders if each drop has a personality. If the chemicals combine and make them unique, like snowflakes. And she wonders if they dream of going home again, back to the sky that made them.  
Thomas Wolfe says you can't go home again and Ashley knows this to be true.  
You grow up and you leave behind childhood. You move away and leave behind parents. You fall out of love and leave behind a broken heart. You get older and leave behind youth.  
You are always leaving and never staying.

_I was always leaving and never staying, wasn't I?_

But she just thought she was moving, just thought she was running.  
All the while, Ashley's feet were nailed to the floor.  
The drugs made her feel like she was awake, but with her eyes closed. They made her feel like 'home' was only a sniff away, creating days of halcyon behind her dead gaze - all so she didn't have to remember what once was.  
A father who loved her, but couldn't stay married to her mother. A mother who loved her, but couldn't deal with heart-ache so well.

_I was always leaving. Never staying._

But she just thought she was moving, just thought she was getting away.  
In truth, Ashley never left at all - she became translucent, a shell of whoever she used to be, a see-through kind of girl that stood at the front door... One foot out and still both feet in.  
And that father that loved her, he didn't know how to fix her. And that mother who loved her, she didn't know how to save her.

And the drinking worked. Until it didn't.  
And the drugs worked. Until she needed more just to get by.  
And Ashley thought she was so far away from it all.  
Until she realized she wasn't.

_I was always leaving... but trying to stay... wasn't I?_

Kyla, like she has cultivated some type of sixth sense, curls an arm about Ashley's waist and hugs her tightly.  
Like Ashley might just fade. Or like Ashley might just get up and walk out.  
And she wants to tell her sister all these rambling thoughts, wants to spell out this literature of constant emotion, wants to cut the string and watch that kite disappear.  
But Kyla stays quiet and so does Ashley.  
And they hold onto one another long after Madison turns out the light and turns off the television, two sisters in El Reno as a storm passes overhead - working out how to keep going and still stick around.

"You'll be alright, Ash... You will." Kyla says and Ashley wants to believe in this statement.

She **wants **to believe.  
And, maybe, right now... she will.  
Maybe she'll be alright, in this room and on this trip and with that need still burrowed deep in her gut and with a blonde girl she cannot fully figure out and with those calls she still needs to make and those apologies she still needs to say...  
Maybe Ashley will be alright.  
For now, maybe she'll be just fine.

And, right now, that's all she can ask for.

/ / /

**TBC**


	10. the future of my world, my world

_People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them. - __**James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son**_

The day she admitted she was gay, Ashley sat in the third seat to the left of Meghan Andrews, the resident group therapist, in between Jacob and his crossed arms and Lauren and her constant hair-tugging - one lock of honey-brown held in her fingers, pulled and released... then she'd do it again.

Every one has to own up, eventually. It is one of those big steps, the kind that makes your knees go weak and your forehead break out in a sweat - you face the mirror and finally see yourself. Scars and all.  
Hollowness and heart-break, deception and deceit - there, in your eyes, you see the monster.

There, in her eyes reflected by a group of similar strangers, Ashley saw herself after years of denial and self-inflicted abuse.

She saw a girl, shoe-laces untied and one hip cocked out and a mass of tangled up chestnut hair, and that girl looked back at Ashley - startled and scared and eyes wide with sadness.  
As if asking, as if feverishly questioning, as if begging-

_What the hell did you do to me?_

-And Ashley lets the answer float out from her mouth, carrying with it millions of seconds of agonized betrayal and a faulty excuse. It's all she had to give to that girl, that beautiful girl she trampled in the name of normalcy and in the guise of getting along.

"I'm... uh, I think I'm... I mean..."  
"It's okay, Ashley. Take your time. Finding the reason behind the addiction is the hard part, saying it out loud... well, it just makes it real. Or, rather, makes it more real. But it's an important moment and not easy, I know." Meghan's voice, cool as ice but not as cold, it chips away at Ashley's nervousness.  
Calm where she is frantic and Ashley welcomes it in with a deep inhale.  
And Jacob shifts tiredly. And Lauren starts moving her foot back and forth.  
There is a cough. There is the ticking of the clock on the wall.  
And there is Ashley, words heavy on her tongue and a girl watching her from the other side of the room - watching with malice, yes, but also with a twisted kind of anxiousness.  
That girl wants to see if she can come out and play again.  
That girl wants to see if she can be a part of the here and now this time.  
That girl doesn't want to forever reside in Ashley's history - a dusty page to be forgotten - she wants to map out the rest of the ride.  
If Ashley will only speak, if Ashley will only let her back in.

"I'm gay."

And it's not Washington's crossing of the Delaware.  
It is not D-Day. It is not the dropping of the atomic bomb. It isn't footprints on the moon.  
It is not the death of legends or the rise of evil.  
It is just two words, put together, a statement - a fact of life, a fact of Ashley's life...  
...and yet, it is the end of everything she has known and the beginning of something else, something Ashley cannot control and cannot blind herself to anymore.

And that girl weeps across the way, lungs full of tearful air.  
And Ashley starts crying, too. Crying so hard that the bones in her chest crack, crying so hard that she ends up feeling faint and arms suddenly surround her and all those eyes looking back at her don't seem to say anything other than-

_It's okay. You're okay. Everything will be just fine._

Just like her sister tends to say these days, wrapping Ashley up in random hugs and knowing glances.

_It'll be okay. You'll be okay. Everything is just fine._

And that girl is closer than ever before, relentless in her single-minded pursuit of Ashley's acceptance, that lovely gay girl with the whole world laid out before her... if Ashley will only call her name, if Ashley will just say her name and let her come home.

_It'll be okay_, Ashley says to that girl, thin hand in her own and a grip of iron.

_We'll be okay._

And, this time, Ashley does her best to mean it.

/ / /

Madison sips her coffee, both hands holding onto the styrofoam cup, and sits sleepily beside Ashley as the rain continues to fall. The two of them are in a comfortable silence, gray clouds shifting around them and puddles growing bigger upon the ground.

"Oklahoma is pretty boring." Madison says bluntly, lazy eyes still staring off into this lackluster dawn.  
And Ashley has to agree, because there is absolutely nothing to do in the town that they have stopped in and none of them are that encouraged to go digging up adventures that might not truly exist in this state.  
"Maybe Arkansas will be better." Ashley says with a small grin, because she knows it won't be that amazing. And Madison does, too.  
The girl just snorts her amusement and continues to drink her morning beverage.  
"Well, I guess road trips aren't all about fun, right? We are supposed to get all introspective and deep. Can't have fun and do that." Madison comments with a smirk and Ashley finds herself matching that expression, only for entirely different reasons.

Because, really, that is all she has done.  
And, no, it has not been fun.  
But it's been good. It's been something she hasn't wanted to do since she left rehab, but it needed to be done. Kyla's plan sounded like craziness to Ashley, like asking a hermit to go live in the city once more - it seemed like too much, too soon. Another jarring change in landscape and Ashley was only just starting to stand up again.

_Standing, sure, but also shut up in Kyla's apartment like a... well, like a damn hermit. Guess my analogies are rather fitting._

However, there must have been a method to her sister's madness, because it was working.  
Maybe not in the ways Ashley thought or expected.  
But it is working all the same.

When Spencer and Aiden breeze by the two of them, ignoring the eave and the bench and safety from the hard rain still coming down, Madison shakes her head and sighs like this is nothing new, like this happens every day of their lives.  
Ashley sees this out of the corner of her eye, with more of her attention on the couple as they talk rapidly by the SUV and there is the distinct hint of anger to Aiden's face, the noticeable color of weariness to Spencer's gaze.  
And Ashley doesn't want to witness any of this, strange feelings welling up inside of her and mixing with too many other maladies, leaving her off-balance.  
And balance is already difficult for her to come by these days.

And that girl tugs on Ashley's hand, insistent as always.  
And Ashley just walks away, back into the hotel and away from whatever is falling apart out there in the storm.

/ / /

Spencer sits in the back for the first time since that initial day.  
And Aiden drives, but does not look back. Or, at least, does not look back often.  
His eyes weaken and dart towards a blonde-haired girl, whose blue stare is firmly on her crossed legs, and then he is back to the road - focus intent and harsh.

And Ashley doesn't like seeing this, doesn't like knowing about this and watching it play out, doesn't want to be a part of it or a cause of it.  
It drags up ancient memories, of nights spent sitting by her bedroom door and the ability to hear tension like one hears heart-beats.  
A thump-thump-thump of built up rage, the sound of the inevitable end.  
All the days she would hope things would change, that she would come back from school and find her father there - smiling and kissing her mother's cheek.  
Instead, she'd walk into arguments. Instead, she would walk into fits of resentment and that ire would wind up in her face - her mother, unchecked and her father, out the door.  
No one ever hit her. No one ever laid a hand on her in fury.  
But words cut just as badly.  
And when her mother couldn't yell at the man she once loved and adored, she turned it all onto the daughter who was so like him.

Now, Ashley can rationalize it and knows that it must have been terrible for her parents, too.  
To watch all you worked for just crumble, love turned to dust and blown away.  
But, back then, she could not understand what they were going through and it hurt like hell to be immerse in it and no one seemed to care that her universe was toppling as well.  
Back then, her voice dried up and her gaze turned to stone.  
Back then, Ashley didn't know how to fix their problems or how to even acknowledge her own issues.

And, back then, disappearing sounded like a good idea.

But she cannot slip away now, as they all speed along and the air is thick with troubled silence.  
And Ashley sees that girl, the one that she carries on her back or that runs beside her while Ashley slowly stalks.  
She sees that girl and wonders how she'd handle all of this, how she would have screamed to be heard in that huge house of her childhood, how she could have saved Ashley all along.  
If only Ashley would have let her.  
That girl could have kept those parents in her life. That girl could have turned down that first drink, that first joint, that first line. That girl could have stood up and said 'I'm gay' without it sounding like a curse.  
But Ashley just let it all disappear, every single one of her first-time chances, and she steadily followed that trail to the very bottom.

And another pair is splitting up, right before her eyes.  
Right before Kyla's eyes. Right before Madison's.  
And Aiden will want to disappear. And Spencer will want to disappear, too.  
Everyone wants to turn to nothingness when the illusion shatters, when you are left with only fragments and no longer the whole, when your world catapults into the stratosphere and you don't know how to get it back.  
You just know you want it back. God, do you want it back. Even if it is completely wrong for you, even if it would only ruin you... you want it back.

Just like Kyla wanted Ashley back, even when Ashley was a wreck.  
Just like Madison wants Ashley, even though they both know it wouldn't work.  
Just like Aiden wants Spencer, even though he knows she is already gone.  
Just like Spencer wants** someone**, even though she knows it might be a woman.  
Just like Ashley wants another sip, another hit, another blast of smoke to waft over her face.  
Just like Ashley wants someone, too.

"Pit stop." Aiden says coolly, stepping out of the automobile and walking quick to the Shell station. Madison takes this opportunity to turn around and fix the side of Spencer's head with bland stare.  
"Okay, Spencer, fess up. What is going on with you guys **now**?"  
"Leave it, Madison." Spencer warns quietly.  
Kyla is glancing between the two girls and Ashley is keeping her gaze trained on the lines upon her jeans, tracing them over and over.  
Not wanting to listen. Not wanting to know what she already knows.  
"Well, we can't spend the rest of this trip with you two not talking. It's making things all awkward."  
"God forbid you suffer for five seconds, right Maddie?" Spencer's tone shifts, going from tepid emotional barrier to jugular attack.  
"Five seconds would be fine, Spence. But with you two, it's more like... oh, I don't know... a year or two of agony. Unless I'm mistaken and you've been blissful until today? Hmm?"

Kyla throws up her hands and it startles Ashley out of her intense need to not be in this SUV, to not be around this mess, to not be on this trip at all.

_Fuck the self-awareness. I'd rather be holed up again._

"Guys, c'mon, let's just drop it. Spencer doesn't want to talk about it and Madison... just let it go. Please, let's not do this... **please**?" Kyla pleads, hoping for something resembling sanity will occur and keep things even.  
And Ashley finally sees it, the way her sister has dealt with all things.  
With a sister dancing with danger.  
With parents that couldn't work their stuff out.  
With so much that a little girl shouldn't have to figure out.  
Kyla struggles to find that middle ground and keep it steady, making sure everyone stays on solid ground and picks them up when they crash, picks them up when they don't want to stand at all.  
"Fine." Madison huffs out, opening and then slamming the door in her wake.  
Spencer's head makes a soft thud as she lets it fall back against the hard plastic interior.

"Sorry." Spencer whispers out loud, sounding more wounded than anyone ever should, and Ashley thinks that apology is for so many things.  
For hundreds of thousands of things, things that no one knows about and things that are slowly coming to light.

But Ashley says nothing and Kyla can only reach out, running a comforting hand along Spencer's shoulder. And then the girl is gone, leaving Kyla and Ashley sitting in the back-seat.

"Ash, I'm sorry, too..." Kyla starts and Ashley, taking the initiative, pulls Kyla's hands into her own and gently holds them, feels their warmth as Kyla returns the grasp.  
"Don't be. You didn't plan on this."  
"I wanted to **help** you, to let you see that the world wasn't going to eat you up or, you know, whatever... and here we are, just more drama. That's not what I wanted, not for either of us."  
"It's okay. It'll be okay."

And it is all in motion, that girl and Ashley - becoming one as they offer Kyla understanding where there used to be only apathy - and Ashley wants to mean it this time.

_It'll be okay. You'll be okay. Everything will be just fine._

And it is all in motion, the declarations she once made in a therapy circle and the option to say what must be said today, both of them building up in her body. And it starts here, it starts now.  
It won't be perfect. It won't be neat. It is in a car, in a parking lot of a gas station, as the overcast skies still hang about and a new state looms ahead.  
It is in the midst of other peoples' battles.

But, like Meghan Andrews said, it is an important moment nonetheless.

_Because saying it makes it more real._

And Ashley kisses her sister's cheek, lingering close as she cradles Kyla's head, looking into those eyes so like her own. So very much like her own.

"Thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for giving a damn... for not forgetting me or letting me just... **disintegrate**. Because I would have, you know? I would have killed myself and you wouldn't let me."

And Kyla's face breaks open, tears springing forth, but she does not look away.  
Not for one single second.

"So, uh... you know, you could have asked me to go to Tibet or anywhere at all, Ky... I would've said yes. I'd go with you anywhere. All you ever have to do is ask. Just ask and I am yours."

And Ashley's voice cracks, a sob lodged in her throat, and they are hugging.  
They are trying to impart every bit of love and affection and devotion that they missed out on, trying to mend those two little girls, trying to heal one another.

And, this time, it is working.

/ / /

Eventually, you have to own it. Make it yours again. Take those things to heart and not let them go.

Eventually, you have to just be and let the rest sort itself out.

And you'll be okay. You will.

Everything will be just fine.

Eventually.

/ / /

**TBC**


	11. you're ever welcome with me

_"Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting." — __**Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses **_

And Ashley has asked herself this question so many times, between those scrapes upon her knees from sneaking out her bedroom window to being trashed in some guy's living room with chapped lips so lackluster against her own.  
So many times, Ashley has asked this question, on the day she stood with her teeth chattering even though it wasn't cold - in a room full of knowing glances - to squinting in the sunlight as Kyla drove too recklessly down highways that used to make sense somehow.

Every day, this question, burning her up more so than movement after so long of being still - making her muscles ache in a way no hike or strident walk can manage.  
Every day, this question becomes more prominent in Ashley's head and little girl dreams rush to the shore like the tide, waters once tossed away and forgotten.

_Forgotten for the sake of forgetting... Yea, that sounds about right._

"What were you wishing for, Ashley?" Meghan Andrews asked, clipboard in hand and the group listening even if their eyes were on the floor.  
Because you can't help but listen. You listen and see if anyone sounds like you at all - if anyone shares your pain, your reasoning, your absolute want of oblivion - and if they do, if they are like you... If they are all just like you, then what the hell is wrong with all of you and what is right with the rest of the world?  
If they are just like you, maybe someone will have the answer to Meghan's question.  
Because Ashley didn't have it, not with the marks still deep along her arms and the itching just under the surface - she had no answers for anyone.

"A good time. That's all."

A lie is all she had to give.

_What were you wishing for, Ashley?_

And the answer becomes clearer every morning she opens her eyes and they don't slam shut with haste - bleary from slumber and not from a night too long, from a night too damn full.  
And the answer becomes nearer every second she craves and then does not give in.  
And the answer becomes so obvious every evening as she watches the stars paint the sky and finds it more alluring than any neon flashing, than any groping touch, than any chemical fantasy.

_I was always wishing to be happy again. _

She chased a lot of highs and she hugged a lot of demons close, all in the name of finding that which she sacrificed - going about it all wrong, silence instead of shouting.  
She fell down a lot of rabbit holes. She tripped a lot of wires. She walked carelessly through fields of land-mines and watched as limbs got blown off.  
Not legs, but confidence.  
Not arms, but love of self.  
Not flesh and blood, but heart and soul.  
And she slowly lost it all, she bled clean out.

And a minute of happiness became as foreign to Ashley as a day spent sober.

But that question had always been buried inside of Ashley's body, taking root and growing there - in unending patience... in waiting... just waiting and waiting, on hold like everything else about her life, her whole world just waiting for her to wake up.

And Ashley is awake these days - good, bad or otherwise.  
And that 'thing', that happiness, isn't as far away as before.

It is blindingly close, brighter than the dawn that only she is up to see and with another state just around the bend, it is everywhere she looks.  
It is sewn up and stitched tight to her skin, appendages reanimated and functioning.  
It is in Kyla's soft grin and strong embrace.  
It is in the air Ashley breathes and in the anxiousness she still carries in her bones. It is in the tapping of her fingers and in the quotes that ramble in her mind.

That 'thing', that happiness, is where it has always been.  
In Ashley, just waiting.

_And that's what I've wished for all along._

/ / /

It is in Ozark, Arkansas where the fever reaches its high.  
And if you are a child, weak upon the couch, a mother's cool palm is to your forehead - checking and tending - and a wet cloth is pressed to your neck.  
You sigh, because for a brief whisper of time, the heat recedes and you recall what it feels like to not have lava pouring throughout your tiny little body.

But adults must fend for themselves when the temperature rises.

And the amount of people not talking to each other has increased. What started as Aiden and Spencer has now grown to Spencer and Madison. The radio stays on (almost full volume) and the air-conditioner is acting odd (blowing out less and less cold air). Windows are put down, only to fill up the SUV with humid breeze - heavy with exhaust from the interstate and hazy warmth, the kind of weather that pushes against your chest and makes it hard to breathe.

And Ashley can only tap those fingers so long. She can only stare at the floor of this moving vehicle for so long. Her head gently lolls back, neck uncomfortable as she leans against where a head-rest should be - and her eyes stray, will of their own.  
They catch the smeared vision of the scenery as it goes by - tall pines and dying weeds, tar and yellow paint - a glimpse, nothing more.  
But the guise is easy to dispose of, Ashley decides with a lazy blink of eyelids, and she looks at Spencer - who moved almost reluctantly from the back of the automobile around noon and now sits to Ashley's left.

Shoes off and mostly bare legs pulled up, tucked up as if she can hide forever, Spencer doesn't return this stare. And Ashley does not expect her to.  
Not with a future possibly ending, not with a past that is currently steering them all down this road - Spencer's gaze is trained on all that despair and fear and Ashley understands that better than anyone.  
That's why getting high or drunk was so nice. It helped keep her eyes shut and then she'd not have to see a damn thing. It helps you stay blind and you don't have to see anything at all.  
Not the end of love. Not the beginning of change. Not the way the universe picks you up only to drop you down - and then does it over and over again.

Spencer doesn't want to see any of this and Ashley gets it.

_Better than anyone. Better than maybe even you, Spencer._

And there, just a flutter of lashes and a shaky intake of air, Spencer lets Ashley know that she has been sussed out. But Ashley wasn't hiding, not this time.  
She has lost the ability to hide these days. The smoke and mirrors act, one trick that Ashley mastered over the years, she cannot do it anymore.  
To hide means to cut that girl she's always been off again. To hide means to lie some more.

_To hide means to lose myself and I've finally been found._

So, Ashley takes a deep breath as well - thick with damp atmosphere and hot rubber - and allows it to flow out again, feels it as it caresses her lips.  
And, somehow, she knows that Spencer feels it, too.

"Hey Ash, Ozark sound good to you?" Kyla asks from the front, turning around in the seat.  
"Yea, that's fine."  
"Spencer?" Kyla shifts her question without repeating it.  
"Uh, sure, fine."

And, again, Ashley's stare goes where it wants and finds a pair of eyes studying her.  
Not Spencer's, though. Not even Kyla's.  
It is Aiden who watches her, a hardness born of unseen wounds resting in that expression.  
And the turmoil in Oklahoma suddenly has a focus.

_A kiss amongst the shadows indeed..._

And Ashley tells herself that this isn't the same, that one touch of Spencer's lips to her own is not at all like slipping away to that bathroom at school - elastic on her arm, forcing veins to pop, a delicious secret that no one knew about.  
But Aiden's look says more than Ashley wants to hear, anger and disapproval, reminding her sharply of her father - and that pummels her into the metaphorical ground.

And the happiness does not disappear, it just retreats.  
And the past is not dead, just dormant.  
And attraction is not simple, not this time - not a rolled up piece of paper or a shot glass, a lover that feels nothing in return - but what is going on is so damn easy, too.  
Well, if any of them want it to be easy, that is.

And that's another future that no one knows.

/ / /

Aiden slams the door, which wakes up Madison and she swiftly follows Aiden, trailing behind him as they walk into a cheap-looking restaurant.  
Kyla looks at Ashley expectantly, hand on the door handle.

"Ash?"  
"Not too hungry, Ky."  
"You sure?"  
"Yea."  
"Oh, okay... Spencer, how about you?"

The legs unfold and the feet settle on the floor, but make no move to get back into shoes.  
Spencer's head is tilted down, just a bit, and she shakes her head.

"I'm, uh, not really hungry either."

Kyla nods, sympathetically, then gets out of the SUV. Ashley watches her sister walk away, watches the girl brush the back of a hand over the forehead, sweat all over the five of them like a second skin.

It is just Ashley and Spencer now, both of them quite good at finding pockets in which to fit with each other. This time, though, it is unsteady and they both know it. This time, it is so damn uncertain.

"Sorry this trip has gone to shit."

Spencer's voice is quietly bitter and Ashley's eyes close, her head still back upon the seat.  
She might listen better this way. She might hear things more clearly this way.

_Or are you doing a bit of hiding again, too?_

"Don't worry about it." Ashley says and it comes out like a sigh, unintended tiredness seeping back in once more. Not because of wants, but because of old habits.  
They don't die hard - they just don't die.

"I have to, don't I? I'm causing** all **of this... I've gone and fucked it all up... I've fucked it all **up**."

And here they are, dancing so close to things unsaid - things that Ashley isn't sure she can manage, things that Spencer has yet to name fully.  
This isn't group therapy, a net on which Ashley can fall.  
This is the world that Kyla wanted to show her - its tender hold and its emotional underbelly, the glorious and the damned - and if Ashley chooses to let go... then it is Ashley that must land on her feet this time.

"We all fuck up, Spencer..." Ashley speaks softly, something in her beating like a war-drum and she realizes it is her heart. It is so loud that she is surprised that Spencer cannot hear it.  
But when her eyes open once more, Spencer is watching her, intense and terrified.  
And Ashley wonders if the girl actually did hear the cacophony within her chest.

"...You said my name."

And so she did, the syllables rolling off without a second thought. And Ashley wonders if she has avoided saying the girl's name on purpose, a trick she didn't even know she was pulling.  
She wants to say it again.  
She wants to place it in her arms and watch it fall asleep.  
But Spencer blinks and then Spencer shuts it all down and that net is so far away by now - Ashley knows she is going to be left hanging.

She's going to be left waiting.

"I can't do this. I mean... I just **can't**, okay? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for... for, you know, what happened. I was stoned and stupid."

Ashley is going to be left waiting, a patented excuse ringing in her ears - one she has used more times than she can count. And the net is gone, not a single connection of ropes to catch her.  
It's where one can take a leap of faith or stay stuck below - and Ashley thinks both decisions are fraught with issues.  
But it's a girl, fearless in the face of danger, holding Ashley's hand and she's been waiting, too. She's been left hanging, too, and she won't be denied.  
Not today. Not right now.

"I'm sorry for the timing of it, Spencer..." Ashley says, the words amazingly sure even as they are subdued in nature. And with that name coasting out again, Spencer seems to visibly tremble.  
"...but I'm not sorry for the fact of it."

And those blue eyes freeze, such paralyzing fear in them, and Ashley is reminded of being fifteen and staring at herself in the bathroom mirror - a scared admittance, one she could barely say aloud, and the thoughts she seemed born with took out their knives and slayed her. Thoughts of loss and of insecurity, constant concerns that no one put upon her, no one but herself - they aimed for the kill.  
As if she were born thinking she wasn't worth a damn thing and that no one would stay by her side if she were to be honest.  
If she were to speak truthfully.  
If she were to be, just to be herself.  
And the fear prevented her from being real, but not from constructing a part to play - straight and wasted and uncaring - her self-loathing built a whole new person.  
Fear is oh so powerful, oh so strong. Fear can make you take those pills without thinking. Fear can make you not go home to those parents who miss you.  
Fear can keep you in relationships with people you just don't love.  
Fear can keep you and it does oh so often.

"I can't, Ashley... I can't..." It is a tearful confession, a delicate declaration all wrapped up in sorrow and defeat, and Ashley isn't naive enough to not see it coming.  
There are hearts breaking, after-all.  
There are worlds blowing up.  
And Ashley knows all about that, she really does.  
But the ground is solid beneath Ashley, reassuring as she touches down. And that net isn't for her anymore anyway, it's for a blonde-haired girl on this day. For another girl who can't let go of whatever holds her back, of whatever holds her in stubbornly in place.

_And that is just how it goes, doesn't it?_

It is zen-like in her mind and, yet, surely harder to put into practice - but Ashley is trying, more and more each second, day by day. She is trying to mean what she says. Walk the walk, talk the talk. And she keeps trying to say things, make them real. Give them life.  
As if she were the doctor and this conversation the patient, she leans down and breathes for Spencer, begging the girl to take in oxygen.

"It's okay."

And it is, as much as it seems it would not be, it really is. Ashley does mean it, she really does.  
But Spencer shuffles out of the car, back rigid with a sadness that wants to pour out - and is refused - and Ashley's hand, for a moment, grips the edge of the seat.  
Holds tightly and holds fast, those fingers grip until they slightly shake, an urge rippling through her like a tidal wave...  
...until it passes, until it dies down again.

As if she were the patient, too.  
And Ashley begs for air.

And she takes a breath.  
Then another.  
Then another.  
Then another.

/ / /

**TBC**


	12. we got a wicked admission

"_If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost." - __**Michel Foucault, French philosopher, 1926 - 1984**_

And what do you lose?  
Friends. Family. Even strangers. Those eyes you've never looked into and those hands you've never held and those smiles you've yet to receive - that's what you stand to lose.

That's what Ashley stood to lose, looking in that mirror and seeing herself - wondering at the edges of her body and trying to erase the secrets that stood out there, ribs that spoke of the different and a jaw that tightened with the realization.

And what do you lose?  
Childhood. Home. Even memories. Those cool mornings that found you hugged and those long nights with stories in your ears and those kisses that warmed your heart - that's what you stand to lose.

That's what Ashley stood to lose, slamming the door to their fighting and tearing her room apart - wishing she could spin faster and right the world with the speed of her despair, face raw with a rage that just wouldn't come out and eyes colored with useless actions.

But you turn your hand, you twist and you turn and you lock yourself away.  
Away from the mother and the father who can't see you past their own problems.  
Away from the shadow of your grown-up longings, the ones that peg you as odd girl out again.  
You turn your hand and you twist and you lock yourself away.

And Ashley lost days, weeks even, blacked-out in some ER - chart at the end of her bed as machines beeped and the smell of Clorox swam in her nostrils.  
And Ashley lost months, years even, ignoring phone-calls and ignoring pleas and ignoring any attempts at reconciliation.  
She didn't believe them anymore - a sister or a parent - she didn't give a damn anymore.

She turned her hand and she twisted it all up and she locked herself away.

And she lost everything - lost the moments she used to cherish, lost the friends she might have made, lost that sister's sweet trust, lost a mother's love and a father's affection, lost herself.

You make the lock. But you make the key, too.  
And then you forget.  
You just forget and forget and forget.

In a bottle. In powder. In smoke and in lies and in sex and in tears and in anger.  
In avoidance. In silence. In denial and in hiding and in false bravado.

And you lose. You always lose, in the end.

All those things you think you will have to sacrifice seem too dear and too fragile. Those tender things won't withstand your unabashed honesty, they could never look back at you with acceptance.  
Because you don't look back at yourself with it either.

Ashley didn't want to come from a broken family, didn't want to remember when things were better and then know that it all falls apart. Ashley didn't want to be that girl that others picked on or teased to the point of weeping, didn't want to be the slur in a group of nice words.

Slowly, oh so slowly, she was stripped of those lovely things anyway - by her leaving the house and never coming back, by the mornings that would bleed into blurred nights, by the disappoint in her own gaze and the knowledge that she wasn't going to even try to stop fucking up.

She paid, alright... paid in her life just wasting away, reduced to nickles and dimes on the bar and useless whispers and faked ecstasy.

_I paid. And I paid until the coffers were dry._

And yet, there is more to give and more to watch disappear.  
And yet, there is still truths to repress and there is still chances to be free.  
There is still a cost, every single moment you decide that which you are willing to pay...  
...or to let pass you by.

Like Spencer, sitting in that booth and deathly quiet, with confessions hanging around her neck like a yolk.  
Like Madison, head propped on her hand and staring out the dirty window, clinging to annoyance like a raft in the sea.  
Like Aiden, barely eating and barely concealing his discontentment, watching to see if there is anything left of what he once believed.  
Like Kyla, nervous as she sips her soda, thinking less about this trip that is imploding and more about a sister that won't come into this diner at all.

Like Ashley, doing her best to breathe in an over-heated SUV in Ozark, brown eyes staring at the ceiling and fingers flexing repeatedly against her knees - and she blinks.  
And she sees sunrises and sunsets and stars.  
And she blinks and sees blue eyes, washed out in the night.  
She blinks and sees Kyla in the rehab visitor lobby, as brave as she was scared.  
And she blinks.  
And Ashley sees her parents putting her to bed, lips to her cheek, nightlight flipped on and her father tugs on her hair - grinning - and her mother promises another wonderful morning to come.

And Ashley blinks, blinks back tears and blinks back time and blinks until her eyes are shut - crying in an over-heated SUV in Ozark.

And, still, she is paying.

/ / /

To the right of them, there are other people - kids running around, playing out parts in some fantastical scene straight from a movie everyone has seen (_catch those fireflies, giggle into your ice cream_) and proud fathers by the grill, proud mothers drinking that cold tea.  
And glass jars, with tiny palms for lids, holding in points of moving light - summer finally caught.  
And to the left of them is another stream, where all the older boys and girls tend to go and they don't skip rocks - they fly, wings fluttering open under the darkened sky, with lips that touch and hands that roam and all those illegal things are just dares in the night.  
Skinny-dipping, wet palms crushed together, holding on for this wonderful ride - freedom finally won.

But here they are, five people in a stiff circle and a fire in the middle of them.  
Those tents are set up and no one knows who is sleeping with who tonight.  
The heat is still present, causing sweat without the sun being around, and Ashley recalls those hallways - white and long and cool - and she can almost feel the chill on the bottom of her feet.  
She'd walk around like that - calmly barefoot - until someone would give her a tired look and would tell her to put those shoes back on. And she would always comply... only to take them off again, skirting around corners and bugging Tammie and leaning on the wall by Ron's door - listening to him moan and cry out as wanting claimed its rightful place once more.  
And Ashley used to imagine what she would say, if she could speak and if she trusted her own voice and if anything of use could be found on her tongue - she used to imagine being the kind of person who could help Ron.

_To do that would mean that I could, eventually, say the right things to myself._

But Ashley would just walk away, every single night, feet on that cold floor - silent as a tomb.

Now, though, the silence is deafening. The quiet sounds a lot like the crashing of a car or like nails down the blackboard. Right now, all of this not-talking is making so much noise.  
And Ashley imagines being able to break it, to settle this ache and mend the rifts.  
To erase the pressure in her own head, the blood would stop pushing so violently in her brain and the air would flood her lungs instead of trickling in - Ashley would give almost anything to be able to make this occur.

She just taps her fingers, though.  
She taps them into rhythm and then out again, making sense and then making no sense at all.  
Both hands going, switching off in their joined duties, and it is not just the overwhelming lack of speech that is causing her never-dormant tick to go into second gear.  
There, catching beautifully in those dancing flames of orange and yellow, right there - not three feet away, is an amber star.  
She sees how it glistens. She sees the slope of it in the light and her hands remember.  
Her hands want to remember even more, so Ashley taps out songs and measures and totally useless tunes instead.

Kyla's eyes bore into her and Ashley wants to wave her off, wants to prove so many points, wants to stand on her own two feet.  
And Aiden's eyes stare at her, too.  
No longer in wavering malice, though, just unnerved focus - like he has questions to ask and this might be his time to ask them, like he wants answers for things that Ashley only half-knows about.

"Pass me one, Aiden." Madison says and the boy complies, one slightly chilled bottle handed over. And Ashley knows that Kyla is itching to stop all of this - the beer that she didn't know was bought, the fighting that she can't figure out, this trip that was to be her gift and is turning into her curse.  
"Kyla, you in this time?" Aiden asks and Ashley can hear her sister sigh so heavily, not from the denial about to come but from a lot of other things - things only sisters share, secrets only two girls know, stories only they can tell to each other.  
"No thanks."  
Madison takes a long pull and then fixes Kyla with an amused look.  
"Ky, what has gotten into you? Don't tell me you've gone all straight-edge or something..."  
"No. Just not interested."  
"Or is it that **Ashley** is not interested?"

Kyla's gaze is worried, muscles ready to jump in and defend. Like a damn super-hero. And Ashley wonders if her sister is just that, a real, honest-to-god hero underneath pricey clothing.  
But Aiden's inquiry, which doesn't beg a response necessarily, is out there now.  
And she could wait to be rescued, could languish on those train-tracks for someone to cut her loose.  
Instead, her fingers slowly stop tapping and she is breathing so deeply, so deep that she could pass out, but she knows she won't.  
Ashley won't pass out or ask for a drink or go off shaking into the shadows.  
She might not survive until morning, but she'll not die of fear - not tonight - maybe she'll get to die of honesty this time.

"Aiden, don't..." Kyla starts, but the boy takes a quick swig of his beer and keeps on watching Ashley past the firelight.  
"You said she wasn't drinking because of you, right? A while back... in Arizona, right?"  
She applauds his ability to remember, to store facts behind that grin and those beat-poet daydreams - Ashley didn't think anyone did much of that, didn't think anyone really listened.  
Except Kyla, because the girl cares so much.  
Except therapists, because they are paid to care.  
But that is a familiar cynicism welling up, trying to protect her in this new circle and with these new faces around her - this new kind of therapy, without rules and without nets.

_And am I going to stand? Or am I going to fall? Are we ready to walk? Or must we still crawl?_

"Yea, it was because of me." Ashley replies softly, those desperate fingers locked in her lap.  
"Ash..."  
"It's fine, Kyla."  
"No, Ashley... Aiden, just back off, okay?"

Kyla and Aiden match unexpected glares - Kyla going all mother-hen and Aiden the petulant child and Ashley would find this so amusing if it were not so serious.

"What's the big fucking deal?" Aiden asks, clearly annoyed.  
"God, what's **your **deal, Aiden?" Madison suddenly mutters, rolling her eyes for effect.  
"This has nothing to do with you, Madison." Aiden shoots back.  
"Guess you must be cranky, hmm, Aiden? Since you and Spencer are obviously still on the outs." Madison throws a low-blow kind of hit, which lights another type of fire in the boy's eyes and drags the fifth party into this inferno.  
"Madison, shut up." Spencer's voice is heavy and raw and the sound of it could wound Ashley's heart if that poor organ wasn't already beating too hard, pumping too fitfully.  
"Yea, well, she's not completely wrong... is she, Spence?" Aiden cuts in coldly.

And the punches are flying fast, no one caring about who gets hit or who gets hurt, no one watching to see who will be left bloody or who will be left broken.  
The truth hurts. The truth rips you up. The truth eviscerates you, turning you inside-out and exposes you - maybe you were always jealous of a steady lover, maybe you always knew that that girl would leave you, maybe you always wanted what you told yourself you couldn't have...

...Maybe you've always wanted to lay it all out on the line and stop worrying if anyone will take you home after the fact.  
Maybe you have always wanted to be the one you went home with, your face in reflection, you and you alone.

_The truth sets you free, sure they all say that - but at what cost? What's the cost this time?_

"Aiden,** don't **do this now, okay?" Spencer's voice cracks and Ashley can't reach out, even if she wants to... and she does want to.  
Madison's hard gaze weakens at the sound, too, and Ashley can tell the girl is backing down -shoulders relaxing and a subtle shake of her head, as if to clear away the webs they are all weaving.  
And that poet, that boy with longings and yearnings, Ashley can see his heart crumbling - a maze falling in on itself, corridors he built with hope just come down, and he wants to stay angry. But Spencer's plea halts him, keeps him tied up and torn.

The five of them, around this fire, falling apart in a million different ways.  
And who is the hero now?  
Who will ever be the hero now?

_Will it ever be __**you**__, Ashley Davies? Will it ever be you who saves the day?_

"I... I, uh, I can't drink... because I **want** to drink."

And her heart pounds. And her eyes stay open. And those fingers stay still, clasped close together. And she is probably not saving anyone.  
Except maybe herself.

But, then again, that's what it is all about.

It's not about Aiden and what he knows about a night not so long ago.  
It's not about Spencer and what she wants, what she needs, what she denies and debates.  
It's not about Madison or Kyla or anyone else.

Ashley has paid the price so many times, over and over, and now she is ready to take back some of what she earned.  
Earned in tears and earned in screaming, earned with a year locked away and earned with this night right here - with something so near and still she stays far from it.  
Ashley has earned this honesty, has earned this truth.

And, this time, she has the answers.

And Meghan Andrews would be proud. Tammie, too. And Ron and all those other trashed warriors, those forgotten soldiers on dirty dance-floors and in stained alley-ways.

"And I want to drink all the time. I want to knock back one of those beers. And then another... then **another**... until I can't even get up. Until I forget your name."

Ashley looks at Aiden, his face trapped between awkwardness and the fire, between a kiss kept secret and his need for an explanation.

"Until I can't remember any of you at all..."

And blue eyes latch onto her face, Ashley doesn't need to acknowledge them and doesn't need to see the way they glow against the night - Ashley knows Spencer is watching, knows that Spencer cannot look away.  
Ashley knows what Spencer craves, one addict to another, and so Ashley doesn't return that gaze.  
Not this time. Not tonight.  
No net in her arms or on her lips, not this time.

Ashley is saving herself this time.

But she looks at Kyla, her little sister, that other hero by her side - always by her side.  
This girl who knows her faults, but never asked about the cause of them.  
This girl who welcomes her back, but never asks where she has been.  
And they watch each other, one of them opening up and the other one just ready... just ready for whatever may come.

"And that's why I can't drink, because I... I want to remember. I want to remember it all."

Kyla smiles and that is all Ashley needs.  
That's just one thing that Ashley has wanted to earn, that's just one reason why she agreed to go on this trip in the first place, that's just one cost she is finally willing to pay.

And she is the child with the firefly, for a moment.  
She is that jumping form into the water below.  
For a moment, Ashley is the brave one and it doesn't feel like dying.

It feels like living.

It feels like being alive.

/ / /

**TBC**


	13. you came along and you cut me loose

_"Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen." _— **Augusten Burroughs, Dry: A Memoir**

Ashley wonders if her eyes do the same thing - carry a world within them, tell tales even as her mouth stays shut. She wonders if her eyes convey all the days spent in dark sunglasses and clothes worn for weeks. Days spent with thin skin and pale cheeks, all the joy stripped away as she closed the curtains and kept the sunlight away.

_Is that in my gaze? Is it stamped along my body? Does it linger in my hair, hues I cannot wash out or hide?_

Because she's been through the war.  
She has the scars. She has the nightmares, waking up in a sweat when her breathing just won't calm down.  
She's been to the bottom and stared up at the top - looked with envy at all those people who got their shit together, looked with anger at all those people who had it better than she did, looked with sadness... endless sadness... at all those people... all those people who could walk around, free from pain, while she wallowed in it.

_Is that what everyone catches when I glance around? Is that carved into the tips of my fingers? Is it written upon my arms, the story of my rise and fall?_

Ashley wonders if all of that is on display as she sits here, Kyla beside her and a weighty silence hovering over the five of them.  
She wonders how the words sounded as she said them - did they hit without warning, a slap to the face? Or did they drift in politely, follow the ear canal and sink in slow?

_Did they sound like a confession? Did they sound like an excuse? Did they make a damn sound at all? Did any of this __**really**__ just happen?_

Ashley wonders if this is just another night in that white-washed facility, with those fifties classics turned down low and the moon somewhere outside her shut window.  
And maybe this trip is a dream, just one long dream.  
Maybe none of this is real at all and Ashley is just so fucking high, high enough to imagine getting better and high enough to see her sister close and high enough to believe that mistakes can be made - but that they don't have to bury you.  
High enough to think that she can speak of things that have ruled her, can say the words that have damned her and whisper the words that have saved her.  
High enough to look around this fire, at her sister and three strangers, and trust that everything will be fine - at the end of the day, everything will be just fine.

There is not a single drop of poison in her blood tonight, though.  
And Ashley doesn't know if everything will be fine.

But she's been through the war.  
She's watched friends die and she's lost her way too many times to count.  
And, still, here she is - not at the top yet, but not at the bottom anymore.

And everything might not be fine, but it'll be alright.

In the end, it'll all be alright.

/ / /

"So... you're an alcoholic?"

Madison's voice breaks the stale-mate that none of them were willing to admit to, causing Aiden's stare to blink and go to the flames, to anywhere but Ashley.  
Causing Spencer's gaze to almost intensify, caught somewhere between Ashley's jawline and temple, as if the blonde can find the answers there first.  
Causing Kyla's smile to falter, for a second or two, the ever-present eagerness to jump in and speak for Ashley lingering on those lips.

But Ashley won't take that offer tonight.

Tonight is all about setting this load down, off her shoulders and off of her soul, not letting her eyes do all the talking - allowing those words to come as they will, to trip and fumble all the way out of her body and into the air.  
Let them breathe. Let them run free.

"Among other things, yea." Ashley responds, looking at Madison calmly - even though she is shaking on the inside, tremors under the flesh that she fights to ignore.  
"What does that mean?"  
"Look, I think we should just call it a night, okay?" Kyla can't let it go, though, that urge to protect. And she'd probably force them all to retreat, she's just that kind of girl - bossy and brash when she wants to be. Ashley likes that about her sister, admires it even.  
A girl like that gets through the war, too.

_But doesn't lose as much in the process, not like me... not like me at all._

"Ky... it's fine, really. It's like, I don't know, a really strange version of twenty questions..."  
"I just don't want you to think you **have** to talk about this."  
"I know... it's okay. I mean... aren't you curious, too?"

In all this time, from when the problems arose - Ashley deciding that school and family could take a back-seat to other things, things that would erase the worries and the insecurities - right up to the day Kyla suggested a road trip to Florida, the girl had never asked a single question.

She didn't ask Ashley what caused this mess to begin with, didn't ask what was going through Ashley's wasted and weary mind, didn't ask for an apology or a reason.  
And Ashley wondered if, after all this time, her sister feared the answers she might get.  
If knowing the truth might bring it all back, the nights where Kyla didn't know if Ashley was alive or dead - no car in that drive, no imprint on the bedsheets, no comrade in arms for when their world fell apart.

"I... I don't, I mean, I didn't want to pry, I guess. You were just so... fragile and I didn't want to push you."  
"So you suggested a long-ass trip instead?" But Ashley says this with a faint smile and Kyla shyly returns it.  
"Yea, something like that." Her sister murmurs and Ashley reaches out, placing her warm hand against Kyla's shoulder.  
"Well, it's working."

Kyla's smile isn't as shy now. And she rests her own hand atop Ashley's, squeezes it firmly, as if to say 'this is your stage now, this is your time now and I'll be waiting in the wings if you need me'.  
And Ashley's heart, still pounding strongly, swells like never before.

But that's not true.

It feels like it used to, once upon a time, before the drugs and the forgotten hours.  
Before rehab and before shame and before overwhelming fear.

Ashley's heart feels whole, like maybe she never truly broke it.

And she turns back to Aiden, to Madison, to Spencer - like she has known them for forever, like she trusts them with her life.  
And maybe she does, because she finally trusts herself.  
Ashley finally trusts herself to make it out alive, to make it out safe and sound.  
So, she flicks her gaze to Madison and picks up where they left off.

"I, uh, was addicted to a lot of things, not just alcohol. You name it, I took it. I had my preferences, though."  
"...Like what?" The girl asks, nothing in those eyes but interest and a whole lot of caring, that soft side revealed once again - just like orange lights in a parking lot and a tender kiss given without expectation.  
"Cocaine mostly. I mean, pot is great and all... but it didn't give me what I wanted."  
"And you wanted to forget... That's what you said, right?" Kyla asks quietly.  
And Ashley doesn't look at her sister, she just finds a point - some patch of dark sky, hints of camp-fire smoke wafting in the shadows - and puts her focus there.  
"Yea... Yea, I wanted to forget."

And Ashley sighs, because this is the first wound, the first step she took towards destruction.

"Why?"

And Kyla's entreaty is so simple. But the answer must be broken down into bits and pieces, snapshots of the past put side-by-side so you can get the whole picture.  
It wasn't just one thing. It was so many things.  
And they bled into one another, turning into something that Ashley couldn't control or understand anymore.  
All she was trying to forget was all she could ever remember.  
And that just made her hunger that much wilder, made her desperation that much more dangerous.  
No, it wasn't just one thing. It became everything.

"I... I wasn't handling things at home very well. The constant fighting and, uh... I was mad. I was **so** mad, all the time. I just... I didn't want to deal with it. I wanted it all to stop."

Ashley can hear her own voice, she can hear the rushing of syllables and she can feel the lump in her throat, how it wants to catch the sentences and slow them down - pinned between wanting to shout and wanting to whimper.  
Her body feels cold, all the blood moving towards the center of her - pooling in her torso and leaving her legs numb, leaving her arms heavy.  
It reminds her of the day she was shoved into the rehab clinic. Or when she cried in front of the therapy circle the first time.  
Release always feels like you are dying, always feels like you are ending.

_And you just hold on tight, just hold on, until you can rise up again... isn't that what they all said to me? Just hold on, just hold on a little longer..._

"You could have talked to me, Ash. We could have been there for each other." Kyla says, her tone all at once saddened and defensive, still that girl waiting up for a sister that never came home. Still that girl who had to face it all alone, with not even a false world to cling to.

"I didn't know how to be there for** anyone**, Ky. Not even myself... **especially** myself. I just wanted to pretend that everything was okay again and going out every night seemed to work. Drinking seemed to work. Getting high seemed to work. It was like pressing a giant mute button on my life. I didn't have to hear the bull-shit and the lies... I didn't have to hear all the stuff in my head and that's all I wanted."

All Ashley wanted was to feel like things were okay.  
If not at home, then in her head.  
If not in her head, then out there in the world.  
If not out there in the world, then she'd fake it for the rest of time.  
That's all she wanted.  
Ashley just wanted to be okay, that's all she wanted.  
Okay about her parents and their failings, okay about not liking boys, okay about being different and standing out... Ashley just wanted to like her life a little more, instead of disliking it so much.  
That's all she fucking wanted, so damn much, that's all she craved. And with every drunken stumble and with every weak turn into the embrace of substance abuse, Ashley thought she was getting there.

"Out of sight, out of mind... right?" Madison asks, though it almost sounds rhetorical. As if, somewhere in a life that Ashley knows nothing of, there is common ground.  
Kyla appears close to crying and Ashley wants to grab her sister, wants to beg for more forgiveness - the kind that will take years and years to deserve - but Ashley does not make a move, not this time.  
Things are precarious, things are shifting and moving and changing right before their eyes, and Ashley doesn't move for fear of disrupting this bout of forward momentum.

"A bit like that." Ashley softly answers and Madison acknowledges the response with a slight nod.  
"When I was in high school... God, I was **such** a bitch. I was into cheerleading and all that preppy shit, it was my world. And then my dad... well, he got into some trouble and everything went to hell. And I kind of lost it, for a while. And that's what I wanted, too, you know? For everything to just** stop**. I just wanted my old life back."

Madison's voice is strained and reflective and that's when Ashley finally notices the other two people here, that boy and girl who cannot be with each other but cannot seem to break away from one another, the two of them so quiet and so removed from this sudden group therapy session.  
Aiden stares so hard at the fire, fingers worrying over the label on his beer bottle.  
Spencer, who had watched Ashley the whole time, is now looking at Madison - blue gaze kind of confused, kind of like she has been living in the dark up until now.

"Did you...?" Kyla leaves the inquiry open-ended, because they all know what she is asking.

_Did you use? Did you get trashed every night? Did you fuck around? Did you pop pills and lose yourself, too?_

"Sometimes. I mean, I knew girls on the squad who took some stuff to stay up late and get work done... I would take a couple of pills, once in a while. I wasn't hooked or anything. But it certainly helped me not to think about... well, about things I didn't want to think about."  
"You never said anything." Spencer's voice carries out and Madison smiles ruefully at the blonde girl.  
"Was I supposed to, Spencer? I mean... we say we are friends, but whenever I ask about your life, you just clam up and keep yourself locked up tight as a drum."  
"That's not true-"  
"And I can still see that you are unhappy, Spencer. You don't tell me a damn thing and I can **still **see that you are the most unhappy girl I've ever met. And if we were really friends, I'd know why that is... because you'd tell me."

It is imploding, this energy that surrounds the five of them, it is pulling inward all too quickly and the fall-out threatens to be massive.  
Ashley feels the blood return to the rest of her body, the tingling in her hands and feet, and it actually hurts. She is feeling too much. She is consumed with emotions and admissions, all this truth-telling making her head ache.  
Under this star-light and in this heat, everything is primed to blow up.  
Blow up and start anew.  
Or blow up and stay dead.

_Just hold on, right? Just hold on. Just keep holding on. And it'll be alright.  
It'll be alright. _

"You don't know a damn thing, Madison."  
"And whose fault is that, Spence?"  
"You know what? I'm **done** with this fucking trip." Spencer stands up as she says this, anger radiating off of her in waves and it hits each one of them.  
It hits Madison and the girl doesn't blink, because she is done with so much more than a trip.  
It hits Aiden and his whole body goes tense, as if he heard the warning bells ages ago but still doesn't know what to do.  
It hits Kyla and Ashley can see that she is ready to give up the fight, ready to maybe give up on this trip herself and go back home.

And it hits Ashley, too.  
Because she has put on those shoes in her own life, tied the laces and put rubber to the ground. And she ran and ran and ran and ran.  
She ran from the agony. She ran from the potential of rejection. She ran from that girl in the mirror, gay and terrified.  
Ashley ran from a million other 'road trips' and in Spencer's eyes, she sees the marathon to come and she sees the miles already traversed.  
In Spencer's eyes, she sees the other reason she turned to partying and to drinking and to hours upon hours of medicated make-believe.  
In Spencer's eyes, Ashley sees herself.  
And it hits Ashley again, hits her until she stands up as well.

"Spence..." Aiden starts, sounding tired, but Spencer rounds on him as well.  
No one is safe from her tonight.  
Because rage is a funny thing, especially when it is truly directed at yourself. You aim and you fire and you take as much as you can.  
But you'll not go quietly. You'll not let anyone call you out on it. You'll lash out, lion in a cage, and there will be casualities in this battle with yourself.  
Parts of your soul. Parts of your sanity. Parts of your intricate world - friends you never had, boys you never loved - you'll just watch it burn up and turn to dust.  
And you'll rage some more.  
And run some more.

"Leave me the fuck alone, Aiden. It's not like you and I have anything left to talk about."  
And here it goes, here goes the powder-keg, here goes the match and the spark.  
And Madison stares at the ground.  
And Kyla curls in on herself.  
And Ashley stays standing, motionless, not even sure what she can do and if she should do a damn thing at all - and she watches Spencer this time.  
Caught between the jawline and the temple, seeking answers to questions she has asked so many times before, and she wants to find them.  
She wants Spencer to find them, too.

"You know what, Spencer? Go to hell." Aiden spits out and gets up, storming away, beer bottle hitting the dirt below with a thud.  
Ashley hears the smallest of sobs, a wounded thing that Spencer tries to cover up, and then the blonde is turning fast, ready to rush off into the night and hide and weep and fall apart.

It is all impulse after that.  
Ashley walks away from Kyla and Madison and the fire. She catches up to Spencer and reaches out, snagging her elbow.  
And Spencer jerks away, turning those broken blue eyes onto her now.

_Just hold on. It'll be alright. _

"Go away, Ashley. Just go away..."

So haunted and so defeated, Spencer is pushing at them all. Pushing and pushing until everyone is gone and she can fulfill every damning prophecy, she can prove every lie she's told herself.

"No, because I... I get it, okay?"

Spencer laughs, but it is not an amused sound. It is bitter. It is broken.

"What do **you** get, hmm? I'm not out here to shoot up or anything. I'm not like you."  
"I wasn't just trying to forget about my problems at home, Spencer. I was trying to forget who I was, who I **am**."  
"I don't **care**!" She shouts out, their eyes meeting fully for the first time since this day began.  
And the storm is there. And the fear is there.  
Like what Ashley might say isn't so much a secret now. Like what Ashley is looks a lot like what Spencer is, too.

_It'll be alright. Just hold on._

"I didn't want to be gay. I didn't want to be **that** girl, the one they call 'dyke', the one who would have the whole world judging me. I wanted to be like everyone else and I did all I could to make that happen."

Spencer is biting her bottom lip and shaking her head, stepping backwards and away - so scared, so very scared of the the reality to come.

"But I couldn't change it... Spencer, you can't change who you are... You just **can't**."

Spencer is crying and Ashley doubts that the girl is even aware of this fact.  
And Ashley crosses the fine line that separates them, allows the distance to narrow, and she takes this girl into her arms.

And Ashley holds onto Spencer as she cries, cries for what was once lost and is now so wonderfully and so tragically found.

_Just hold on, that's what they told me... and it'll be alright.  
Everything will be alright._

/ / /

**TBC**


	14. you had to learn about the hardest thing

"_The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."_

_- __**Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher & theologian**_

When it finally hits you, that you cannot escape the person you locked away... the girl you didn't want to be or the woman you didn't want to become... well, the world spins right off its axis.  
And you wonder how no one else notices it, you wonder if you are the only one to feel the earth quake beneath your feet or to see the skies part above your head.  
If this were some cartoon, the kind of thing you'd watch as a child - eating your cereal and only playing outside on your mind - it would be the light bulb, flicking on with a hum.

When it finally hits you, everything changes.  
And you are never the same.

When Ashley started to actually get clean, no more of those random early days where her party-dealers were out of town and she had to get by on the kindness of 'friends' - no, not that, but real sobriety... When Ashley started to open her eyes and see the clouds, see the color of someone's eyes, count the cracks on the concrete as she walked around the fitness track at rehab... Well, there it was.

The truth.  
Years spent with a vein popped. Years spent with glass rims to her lips.  
Years spent waking up to grayness, rubbing at her nose more and more, playing it off as a bad cold. Years spent not always waking up, a pair of hands pushing her off a bed or couch, gaze coming to on a hospital bed.  
Years spent not answering phone-calls, angry voices that she didn't want to hear.  
Years spent in private denial, lies for lovers and disgust for breakfast, tripping from one dark corner to another.

The truth.  
There it was and Ashley was finally caught.  
And, oh she fought as hard as she could - a fist to her sister's face, cries for help that she'd later take back, always careless... just hoping that, one day, she'd find out just how to care...  
But the truth always wins.  
It'll knock you out. It'll split your lip. It'll wipe the floor with you.

And the truth can clean all your slates, but it won't be pretty.  
Ashley wasn't looking her best the day Kyla dragged her to rehab, dirty clothes and still terribly wasted. Ashley wasn't looking her best the day she sobbed out her life-story, seeing a kid across the way that she tried to kill off so long ago.  
Ashley wasn't even looking her best the day Kyla came to haul her back into the world, blinking at the sunlight and nervous and wanting so badly to grab a hold of her sister's hand, wanting so badly to find a kind of protection that didn't come in a drink or a pill or a powder.

The truth isn't lovely. The truth isn't easy. The truth isn't simple.  
And when it finally hits you, when it finally sinks in and catches you, that's when the real test begins.

That's when you learn if you'll sink.  
Or if you'll swim.

/ / /

Breathing in-between sobbing, a hitch where she tries to capture oxygen and can barely manage it, and the warm wetness soaking into Ashley's shirt - here is Spencer, called out and unable to fight anymore.  
And Ashley holds her tongue, because all the words are ones you have to learn on your own anyway. Words about how it'll be bad before it gets better. Words about how bravery isn't stopping bullets or saving children, it is really just being honest when all you want to do is lie.  
These are things Spencer will have to find out, when she is ready for them.

But Ashley can do this - she can hold this girl so like herself, she can feel the slight tremble and allow her hands to soothe along Spencer's back. She can be this tender place for someone, she can be a net for right now... She can catch Spencer as she plummets, a free-fall that has been a long time coming.  
Ashley can do this, she can reach out ever so slowly and not fear what her touch will find.  
She can reach out and pull someone from the ledge, too.

"I'm sorry..." Spencer whispers against Ashley's now damp neck and Spencer's fingers cling to Ashley's sides, all twisted up in the material of her t-shirt.  
"Don't be, it's okay."  
"I-I've cried all over you and I went off back there... God, I am **such** a fucking **mess**... just such a fucking mess..."

Ashley pulls back gently, again going on pure impulse, and cups Spencer's face. Her thumbs move quietly over the tracks of weeping and Spencer's eyes are tired, so damn tired, and Ashley feels a million and one emotions in this moment.  
Sympathy and empathy, a sudden rush of fierce protection and strands of pride, and there - in a flash of heat lightning, with all this humidity about to break into a storm - ...there, winding up through Ashley's body, is an aching want.  
To save, to be closer, to understand, to calm, to embrace, to kiss - so much want in Ashley's blood, so much want in Spencer's weary gaze.

_Don't do this. Don't fuck this up. Don't do it._

And is it just Spencer she sees? Or is it just too many shades of herself?  
Is it safety that they seek in each others arms? Or is it the chance of something more, something real?  
Ashley can't stop staring, tracing the sorrow and the need in those blue eyes, and she offers up a weak smile. One which Spencer does her best to return, hands still hold upon Ashley's ribs, heat pushing past the clothing.

"We're all a mess, Spencer... every single one us... I can promise you that." Ashley says softly, letting her palms drift down from the blonde's face and they come to rest on Spencer's shoulders.  
Still near, still willing, but not nearly as dangerous.  
Because Ashley is not ready for more. And Spencer isn't ready for more.  
Because this is just the beginning - the start of Spencer's truth, the start of Ashley's heroism.  
Because this is just the ending - the end of Spencer and Aiden, the end of what is fake and what is false.

And everyone is having their epiphanies tonight, their starts and their stops.  
And everyone is a mess, thorns and brambles, brush to be cleared back.

And the truth sets the trap, around a camp-fire and during a road-trip.  
And each one of them will be caught, forced to face the beast within... with only the hope of a better tomorrow to keep them going.  
With only the hope, in a hand to hold or a second of forgiveness or someone to cry upon, to carry them through.

_Hold on tight and it'll all be alright._

/ / /

He doesn't look up at Spencer. He doesn't look up at Ashley. He just watches the flames die out, more embers than anything now.  
And Kyla isn't there, neither is Madison - just Aiden, Spencer and Ashley to watch the sky light up and to hear the thunder in the distance.  
The rest of the campground has come to silence as well, all the families tucked away safely in their tents.  
It is as if the three of them are the only ones in the entire world, looking and not looking all at the same time, waiting for what comes next.

_Sink or swim. Live or die. _

And Ashley glances at Spencer, taking in the girl's profile - skin soft with sadness, lips full with all that needs to be spoken. And Spencer stares helplessly at Aiden, probably wondering if there will be anything left after this night - will there be a friend one day? Will there ever be a hour to come where the hurt will cease and the healing will commence between the two of them?  
And Aiden doesn't look at either of them, the bottle he dropped still on the ground, his gaze hidden in the shadows. But that's where he wants to be and Ashley understands.  
The walls are closing in. The edge is so close now.  
And with one utterance, it'll all come crashing down.  
The fantasy they built - Spencer and Aiden, the couple - the dream they told each other, the wish they hoped would sustain them... All of it, falling down.

"...Did you do it again?" He asks, voice like a knife, trying desperately to be cold in the face of this pain and this torture.  
And Ashley watches as Spencer's hands fold into each other, every bit of the blonde looking like a little kid, tiny and afraid.  
"Do what?" Spencer asks and Aiden releases a laugh, though it is not at all amused-sounding.  
"Kiss her, Spence. Did you **kiss **her again?"  
A brief flash of blue onto brown, Spencer's quick look at Ashley confirming what this tension has been about since Oklahoma, and then the blonde clears her throat.  
Clears the way. Sweeps off this path that she has tried to cover up.  
Ashley understands.

_God, do I understand..._

"No... No, I didn't." Spencer answers in a quiet voice.  
"But you wanted to... didn't you?" He questions, voice about a perfect match to Spencer's.  
The two of them silently talking, gently digging at each other, wounding each other so delicately - like only once-upon-a-time people can do, like only liars who know they've been lying can do.  
"...Yes."

And just that whisper, just a ghost of an admission, but it rips the shroud from them all.  
Aiden's face is turned upwards now, stare right at Spencer, and the blonde is meeting it.  
And Ashley wants to leave, wants to let them destroy one another in peace.  
But she stays.  
Maybe for Spencer. Maybe for Aiden, too.  
But maybe it is just for her, to see if she can long for something and wait it out, to see the consequences first-hand of hurried actions - she didn't ask for that kiss by the river, but she didn't push Spencer away... She didn't ask for these feelings, but they came along anyway.  
In a rear-view. In a smile. In a body beside her own as the morning broke. In a hand upon her own, stars up above to bless them and judge them.

Ashley wasn't seeking out Spencer, nor any woman.  
She wasn't looking for a connection such as this. She would have been content to read books and tap her fingers relentlessly. She would have wasted away the hours with all her tentative steps back to the land of the living - avoiding those aisles in the supermarket, the ones with Jameson and Jack and Jim.  
She wasn't looking for anyone.  
Just herself. Just Kyla. And, perhaps, a couple of people she left behind - a couple of people who gave her these eyes and this grin, who gave her passion and who gave her rage.  
Ashley wasn't thinking about the possibility of attraction.  
But there, in the back of a SUV, she looked into Spencer's blue eyes.  
And all the little thoughts she didn't think she was having just came to life.

"So... what? You two are **together** now?" Aiden's facade is shattered and now the anger is coming through, anger at Ashley and at Spencer, anger at himself.  
Angry at the deceit that they all played a part in, knowingly or not.  
Angry for the sake of what is dying and how it cannot be stopped.  
"No, Aiden... I just... I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry, I am **so sorry**..." Spencer's tears return and Ashley watches, mutely, as they fall - as they hang on the chin and fall to disappear in the dirt.  
"I don't get it... I mean, you said, Spence, you **said** that you loved me and that we could work things out. That's what this whole **fucking** trip was about, right? You and me... it was about **you** and **me**..." His voice cracks and those embers reflect the sheen of his sorrow, his battle with weeping now lost.  
"I tried, Aiden... I** tried**, but I... I'm just not... I'm just not in love with you..."  
"And that's what you feel for her? You don't even** know her**!"  
Spencer's hands fly up, winding their way through those blonde locks, and those blue eyes shut and squeeze out more teardrops.  
"I don't know **what** I feel, I just know that... that you and I, we don't work, Aiden... and you know it, you know it, too."

The boy grits his teeth and his jaw goes hard.  
The girl keeps her eyes closed and cries quietly.  
And Ashley breathes in, breathes out. She keeps her hands to herself, one part eager to run and one part eager to comfort - twitching under the skin, that ever-constant anxiousness, keeping her frozen to this spot in the storm.  
And just when it seems that the air cannot get thicker, Aiden's heated stare lands on Ashley.  
No words. No accusations. No baiting or slams.  
Just his eyes, wounded and watching, as if he could wish her away with his feelings alone.  
As if she is the reason this fairy-tale is coming to a close.  
As if they could have kept on pretending... if only she had not shown up.

And it'll be a hollow consolation to wrap himself up in tonight and Aiden knows it... He knows it, because the glare falters as more tears present themselves, as he covers his eyes from view once more and his shoulders sag.

The truth, there it is, a bitter victory as usual.

When he stands up, he keeps his gaze to the ground and walks away.  
And Spencer looks like she wants to go after him, to beg for an acceptance that she cannot ask for just yet, her left foot starting to move and her right foot lodged in place.  
The thunder is closer now and the wind picks up. The clouds take away the small bit of moonlight granted to them and the embers flare up, bits of ash fluttering away into the darkness. And the rain begins to fall, hitting Ashley's face with a sharp sting.

Then, Spencer is turning, hair being blown about and Ashley knows what the girl needs, what she's been wanting for forever and is still not sure enough to ask for.  
And Ashley is moving, not without thought but not entirely sure of her full purpose, becoming more and more fearless with each step.

Her fingers wipe away those tears, but do not negate them.  
Her lips kiss Spencer's forehead, but do not linger for more than that.

They embrace again, but it is not at all like the other times.

It's a start.  
To what, neither of them know, but it is the start of something.

/ / /

Sometimes, you get caught because you want to be found out.

/ / /

**TBC**

**Must admit, I am not very pleased with this. But such is life.**


	15. how deep is this hole i feel i'm in

"_Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."_ - _**Jalal ad-din Muhammad Rumi, Persian poet and mystic**_

The foundation gets put down, by parents and by words spoken and by images seen and by the touches of grace and by the moments in-between - you are built._  
_And then you start your own form of construction.  
And it all goes so wrong, doesn't it?  
Where you thought you put doors, you just created an entrance for pain.  
What you thought you could protect with plaster just gets stolen anyway.  
Or you give it away. Or you throw it away, out the window you left open.

You are built up and you are brought to the ground, just like that.  
By family. By friends. By yourself, all by yourself, sweating on a floor somewhere - itchy arms and clammy palms - you watch the fall of your house just like Poe.  
And those walls don't keep you safe, they just keep you hidden away.  
And those gates don't keep away the ghosts, because the haunting is within your bones.

And how are you going to love yourself now? Walking around, dead on the inside, a not-so-private spook show along the lines on your face - a pretty liar, a wasted chance, a fun-time girl, a child with no home... how are you going to love yourself now?

Ashley used to have the same memory every morning in rehab, right before the bell would chime and the doors would unlock and her feet would shuffle to her first therapy meeting of the day.  
She'd wake up with that memory there, hanging about her mind like a thin curtain - gauzy and smooth - and she could almost reach out, push it aside, maybe see what lived beyond that recollection... but she never made it that far.  
Not even after crying. Not even after admitting. Not even after grasping that little girl's hand and promising to not let go again.

It was the day she left, a bag of clothes and things to sell - some of her own stuff, some of her mother's, some of her father's - and the mirror on her bedroom door caught her as she hurried around, fingers popping and eyes wide and body shaking with a hunger that Ashley didn't know how to fully satisfy.  
And Ashley paused, her own reflected gaze boring into her face like an accusation.

_'When are you going to stop this and just love yourself?'_

But to try and answer that question, that hurt more than anything, because she wasn't sure if there was any love around to give.

And so she stared until it made her angry and then she lashed out, cracking the corner of that mirror and leaving her blood there.  
And she ran off for that world of hurt.  
And she told herself to not look back, to never look back.

_Except I did look back. I was looking back every single fucking day._

Always looking back for the answer. Always looking back for the strength to stay. Always hoping that there was more love then there was despair, somewhere... somewhere...

And how are you going to love yourself now? Standing here, holding this girl in your rebuilt arms and with your not-so-stable heart - a mess in the making, a wish upon a star, a daydream that can't possibly stand a chance... how are you going to love yourself now?

There you are, though, looking in that mirror and trapped by your own misgivings, your own worries, your own fear. And one question lingers on your silent lips.

_'When are you going to stop this and just love yourself?'_

And the curtain is slowly pushed back. And the barriers crumble.  
And on the other side, on the other side of **all** of this - Aiden and agony and friendships failing and drugs and deceit and years forsaken and time stripped away - is that face looking back, telling Ashley that it is okay.  
It is finally okay to stick around.  
It is finally okay to put that bag down.

And the rain on her back feels warm.  
And nothing is fixed, but nothing is that wrong either.  
It won't always be this clear, Ashley knows this, it won't always be this perfect.  
But it is good, right now, it is good.  
And Ashley stops.  
And Ashley takes a second, the first she hopes of many, to love herself just a bit more than yesterday.

Standing here as the skies crack open and the nighttime somehow gets darker, trying her best to protect someone - to protect Spencer - and Ashley loves herself, for just second or two, more than she ever has before.

/ / /

_I don't know how to do this, but I don't want to let you go._

She could be saying that to anyone, though.  
It could be said to her mother, the keeper of those locks of dark hair and those dark eyes and that wicked and wonderful smile - words like 'beauty' were written about women like her mother. So were words like 'warm' and, surprisingly so, words like 'delicate'.  
Ashley never wanted to let her mother go.  
But what you want and what you do, sometimes they are not the same thing.

It could be said towards her father, the man who taught her how to giggle and how to climb trees and whose lips always kissed away every scrape - large hands that picked her up, gave her freedom to fly above his head and, below, his bright grin and his voice as sure as the tide.  
Ashley never wanted to let her father go either.  
But what you want and what you do... god, sometimes they just never match up, they just don't meet in the middle at all.

She could say this to anyone - to friends who used to want her around, long before it was parties and barely-remembered mornings. Or to her sister, legs crossed at the ankle, waiting for a girl that never fucking returned... forever waiting for a sibling that willingly disappeared.

Ashley could be saying this to herself, too.  
And she has, so many times, right before she would take another drink or right before she would snort up another line.  
Right before she would let another stranger's mouth claim her. Right before she would walk into another club or another bar or another house with no name.  
Right before she would court oblivion once more, Ashley would mumble this to herself.  
And then she'd let herself go anyway.

But blue eyes, busted up and broken, flicker upward quietly and that gaze is too timid to give away all it needs, all it craves.  
And, still, it asks for so much. It begs for a way to see things work out for everyone. It wants to be held throughout the night and long into the dawn.

It says the same things that Ashley has said to herself, that Ashley says to herself even now.

_I don't know how to do this, but I don't want to let you go._

And even as she turns the knob, even as she hears the neglected hinges whine, Ashley can't help but pray for the best and expect the worst as she pushes that door open, as she allows enough space for Spencer to come inside.

"I'll stay... if you need me to. If you want me to." Ashley says softly, her voice almost carried away by the wind that blusters around the two of them.  
Her lips brush innocently against Spencer's earlobe as the words tremble out and the blonde turns, just slightly, to be closer to the touch and Ashley feels the pounding of her own heart, feels it reverberate and hit Spencer's chest and come back again.

And Spencer cannot answer, not verbally. And Ashley understands.  
What is building up between them comes with a price, what is welling up in Spencer's blood comes with a sacrifice, what is standing out there beyond Ashley's front-steps is still the unknown - still that circle on her first day in rehab, still that little girl staring with sorrow, still a phone-call that she has yet to make.

And yet, a hand is in her own, pulling in response to her offer. And where it tugs, Ashley aches to follow.

They don't talk about the tent shut up tight, Aiden within its shadows. They don't glance over to where Kyla probably stirs restlessly and Madison keeps those eyes closed, neither one ready to look too closely at what is going on outside.  
They don't even talk to each other yet, feet shuffling towards the unlocked SUV and Spencer lifts the back door, dim yellow cabin light coming on and keeping the blonde's face hidden as she tosses bags to the front and as she puts the back seat down.  
And Ashley waits to be called for, all this patience stalking around her head - a new creature ready to pounce - and when Spencer reaches out, hand tilted to the side and fingers spaced just so, Ashley reaches back without a second thought.

_I don't know how to do this..._

And Ashley almost whispers the rest out loud, almost hears it pass her lips and almost sees it as it cascades over Spencer's face, as it settles somewhere deep in the girl's soul.

_...but I don't want to let you go._

/ / /

"This isn't too comfortable, is it?"

And they both sort of laugh, near one another but still apart, damp shoulders pressed together and still miles away.  
Near but so far.  
Close but not close enough.

"Not really, no."

And Spencer turns onto her side, eyes calmly moving over the side of Ashley's face.  
And Ashley takes a deep breath before meeting that gaze, her own body staying as is but her head shifting to take the girl in.  
They just watch each other, unable to see the whole - swatches of skin, flashes of color.  
But they've seen a lot of one another, so much more than how the hair falls or the blush upon a cheek, they've seen beneath the flesh and been shocked to the core.  
In each other, they have seen themselves.

Spencer moves again, the shy slip of a palm over the top of Ashley's hand, and another question is asked. And it isn't that Ashley cannot deny the answer, she just doesn't want to anymore.  
Her wrist turns and that palm rests against her own and they gently intertwine, lines meeting and fingers locking.  
They hold hands, still in the darkness, but no longer as a lie.  
They listen as the rain hits the roof, their heads leaning and leaning until they lightly touch, cradling one another in unspoken glimpses.  
Neither of them ready for more than that.  
But neither of them willing to pretend, at least for tonight, at least in this automobile and in this storm and in this state they do not know much about.

"I know... I know there is a lot to say... I've got **so** much to say... to so many people..." Spencer hushes out and Ashley allows her eyes to flutter shut, allows the breath coming off of Spencer's mouth to caress her skin.  
Ashley stays quiet, though. Because this is not her story to tell, even though she sees bits and pieces of herself within it, sees a part of her own struggles inside those paragraphs.

_This is Spencer's trial by fire, her ocean to cross. Not mine._

But her grip is firm and she doesn't slide away, doesn't run away.  
Ashley stays put this time.

"I never cared, you know, not about anyone else... I mean, how could I? Look at Madison, she's... well, she's whatever she is and I didn't care. But when it came to myself... God, I just didn't want be... I didn't want to be **different**..."

The way she says that word, the sound of judgment that coats each letter and the terror that lives with each syllable, Ashley knows this word like no other.  
She didn't want to be different either. She didn't want to have that spotlight on her. She didn't want to find her name scrawled onto a locker door, but with a new spelling and a new meaning attached to it.

"Not to mention that my mother... She's just not very open about things."

And Ashley didn't wait around to see if her parents would care or not. If they would condemn or if they would love her still. If they would kick her out or if they would hold her close.  
She didn't wait around to see the fall-out, because that was an ending she had already written in her mind - not that they would care, but that they wouldn't care at all.  
Wrapped up in a world of hate and disappointment, they wouldn't care at all about their daughter as she imploded.  
That's what Ashley told herself, for days and for weeks and, ultimately, for years.

"And I thought I could just keep it away from me. I thought I could date Aiden and sleep with him and it would just fade away."

Drink after drink. Pill after pill. Bedrooms and bar-stools, sticky floors and narrow hallways - all to keep 'it' away, keep the gay away, keep the lingering looks to a minimum, keep those hands at ten and two when some woman danced too dirty at some party - grinding down for the guys who watch and to get a free line, that woman wasn't aware of Ashley and how much she wanted to touch smooth curves, to fist long hair, to capture tender lips.

Spencer's breathing catches and Ashley knows that the tears have returned. And that other hand, stiff by her side, comes to life and moves as if underwater. Languid and steady, gliding over blonde hair in comforting strokes.  
And the girl gets closer still, hesitant utterance pushed into Ashley's neck.

"But... I saw you and something inside of me... I just felt it all collapse, like I couldn't stop it from happening... I saw you and you... you scare the** shit **out of me, Ashley..."

_You scare the shit out of me, too._

And maybe she said this out loud as well, because Spencer sort of nods her head and burrows into Ashley's side. Heads pressed together and Spencer's right hand still in Ashley's left and fingers softly fraying the ends of Spencer's blonde hair, maybe she said everything - even if she didn't say a word at all.  
And maybe Spencer heard every single bit of it.

/ / /

And how are you going to love yourself now? With so much on the line, how are you going to love yourself now? How well are you going to stand up when the dawn brings about all the damage done? When you see the scattered hearts amongst the dirt and stone? When you see all the places you left behind and didn't pick up again?  
When you finally push that last barrier aside?

_How are you going to love yourself now?_

And Ashley doesn't know.  
But that's alright, for now, for right now.  
Right now, Spencer asleep beside her and her own eyes drifting shut, Ashley doesn't have to know.

Because, right now, loving herself is not as hard as it used to be.

/ / /

**TBC**


	16. maybe someday, maybe somehow

**Man, did I have to work hard to get this going again. But here it is. Better than the last attempt I do believe. Thank god.**

/ / /

"_But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening... Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life..._ -**Alice Walker**

Ashley woke up after that first night, not knowing who would be standing outside that door or waiting in that hall or judging her from all those rooms.  
And she woke up after that first week, not knowing this person in the mirror and not knowing these people sitting opposite her and not knowing how she ever got here in the first place.  
And she woke up after that first month.  
And she woke up after all those months, losing seasons and gaining memories.  
Losing the future she was recklessly building, pain for walls and drugs for the floor, and she was winning the right to remember, winning the chance for today.

Today, as the morning breaks and clears the sky of clouds.  
Today, as birds take flight and cut through the cool dawn air.  
Today, as Spencer sleeps beside her, pale hand a soft weight against Ashley's palm.

Today, another day that Ashley cannot control or predict or plan for.

And it'll all fade anyway, all things do.  
All those nights spent wasted and desperate - they fade, too.  
All those fights seen from the stairwell, a family breaking part - they dissolve as well.  
Lingering in the mist, hovering off in the distance, ready to cough and sputter and come to life like they often do - but right now, Ashley doesn't want to figure it all out.

Ashley wakes up and opens her eyes.  
And she sees today.  
Today, Ashley wakes up and she doesn't know what comes next.  
And for the first time ever, she is okay with that.

_Okay with that, terrified of that, curious about that, emotional over that..._

And Ashley woke up after that first night, not knowing if the world would still be standing.

But it was.  
And Ashley couldn't see, back then, that she had just been given the answer to all things.

But she sees it today.

/ / /

"Are you okay?"

Kyla's voice is as quiet as the hour allows and Ashley wraps her sister up suddenly, presses her face into the girl's delicate strands of hair.  
And Kyla holds her in return, fearful edges to her acceptance, more questions underneath that initial one.

No one else is up. No one is around to see the two of them cling to each other, breath leaving lips and creating a fog. No one is around to catch these confessions as they fall.  
Except the two of them, sisters building bridges over canyons.

"This whole trip is turning to** shit**." Kyla mumbles into Ashley's shoulder.  
And Ashley smiles faintly into deep brown waves that almost match her own, pulling back slowly and forcing Kyla's gaze to meet her own.  
"...It's not **that** bad." Ashley responds. Because it's not that bad. There have been worse days, worse evenings. There has been a whole lot of bad in Ashley's not-so-distant past.  
And last night was merely a sting, not the whole swarm.

Kyla rolls her eyes and steps away, sitting down hard by the cold fire-pit.

"Really, Ash? Aiden and Spencer just, I don't know,** imploded **in front of everyone. And I'm not sure what the hell is going on with Madison and Spencer..."

And Kyla looks up from the hands in her lap, no longer twisting anxiously, and Ashley meets her sister's stare, stopping her own fingers from the light tapping they were doing upon her knee. And Ashley wonders if it is genetic, the movement they must make to stop the tension from killing them.  
To stop one girl from feeling the pressure. To stop one girl from picking up a habit.  
To stop the both of them from going when they know that staying is better.  
When talking is better than silence. When loving is better than lying.

"...But, most of all, I want to know what is going on with **you**, Ash. With you... and with Spencer."

No one else is up.  
No broken-hearted boy. No friend at a loss.  
Not even that girl seemingly at the center of it all, still asleep in the car and with the universe just waiting for whatever happens now.

Just Kyla, finally needing to know.  
Just Ashley, finally ready to say.

/ / /

She watches you like she used to, looking at you like you can solve every problem.  
And that used to make you proud, when you were a kid.  
And that used to make you sick to your stomach, when you were no longer a child.

And that was a memory you forced away, tried to mask and cover up.  
That was a memory you didn't want to haunt you.  
Just like a mother's kiss or a father's smile. Just like a home you used to call your own.

Ashley didn't want to be looked upon like she could fix things, like she could explain things, like she could be the shelter when the storm hit.

But Kyla watches her now and Ashley may not be able to halt the trembling in her gut, but she can stand the gaze these days.  
And Ashley doesn't feel proud, not yet.  
But there is the hope that, one day, it'll come back.  
There is the hope that pride will return and will actually stay.

"I didn't just leave home because of all that was going on, you know, with our parents. I... I didn't know how to handle things with myself, with, uh... with stuff I was feeling."  
"...What stuff, Ash?"

And there's that girl, hand on your back.  
There's that girl, begging for more, always begging you for more.

_There's that girl. There you are._

"I didn't want to be gay. I didn't want to be different from other girls. I didn't want to have to deal with** this **on top of everything else that was going wrong. I just... I just couldn't** handle **it... I didn't **want** to handle it..."

And Ashley wakes up.  
And it is just another day, another day she cannot control. Or predict. Or plan for.  
And Ashley wakes up.  
And Kyla is beside her, holding her, because Ashley is crying and it is silent tears and she's stopped trying to guess at how much sorrow must be shed.  
There is Kyla, her sister, letting Ashley know that there was always a safe place to land.  
There was always a net. There was always someone just waiting to hear the truth and they weren't going to disappear after the fact.

And it reminds Ashley of all those hurdles to come, all the sadness yet to spill, all the roads left to travel.

And Ashley isn't sure she can handle it all, not yet  
But there is hope that, one day, she can.

/ / /

And Ashley wakes up.  
And it is no other day but today.  
And she doesn't know what comes next.

But it'll be okay.

/ / /

**TBC**


	17. i want to love you with my heart

_We would rather be ruined than changed; we would rather die in our dread  
than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die_. - **W.H. Auden**

Isn't that part of the problem, part of the trap she set for herself all those years ago? Wasn't it the illusion of her family that she clung to, night after night with powder dusting her fingertips? Wasn't it that image - a guy's palm against her waist, his tongue in her mouth - that she held up for the whole world to see?

She saw her crosses to climb, alright.  
And she gave up, all those years ago, she gave up and stayed on the ground - stayed there with the weakness in her bones, with the broken pieces of her heart.

Those crosses can tower over you, too. They can spook you when you least expect it, always lurking in the back of your mind, taunting you with how your feet slip and how your strength gives out.  
Those crosses stare back at you as well. Eyes that accuse and lips that frown.  
A sister you left behind. A mother you shout at. A father you push aside.

Those crosses have a grand and terrible way of dragging you further down, on your back and digging into your flesh and cutting you up.

And Ashley was in rehab, her fourth month, finally done with the sweating and most of the rage-fueled shaking. She was in the midst of constant sorrow, the confidence and ease that drugs gave her just slipping away like a dream, and she spent most days away from everyone.

Group was tolerated. Doctors heard, but not acknowledged. And this wasn't the place to make friends, after all. Rehab isn't like the tabloids say, pool side service for your therapy and back on the streets in three days - rehab is a bare room, rehab is a long and cold hallway, rehab is strangers who all share the same look in their eyes...

Ashley had that look, too.  
Tired and slightly gaunt and haunted.  
And she was there, during that fourth month, wiping the wet cloth along her skin because her sadness and her anger and her increasing sense of shame was burning her up.  
And Ashley wondered if there actually was a hell.  
And hell isn't buried under layers of Earth. Hell isn't wielding a pitchfork and horns.  
She thought that hell is this - spent and used up at twenty-six, tell-tell marks along the arms and hollowed out gaze, trapped in the very fire you thought you were avoiding.

And Ashley stared at the wounds upon her skin, bruises starting to fade and a faint trail one could follow if they dared - her favorite spot, her special vein, her very own damage done.  
Where the needle softly dipped in.  
Where the chemicals ran free.  
Where all good things were lost and found.  
Where she still wanted to be, where she still **longed** to fucking be.

That fourth month was a cross, too.  
And Ashley couldn't climb it.

/ / /

"One hundred and forty-three miles until Tennessee."

Kyla's voice pipes up from beside Ashley, spoken just loud enough that anyone else could hear it and respond.  
No one does.  
And Ashley hates to see her sister try and get nothing in return, to extend more of herself while everyone else pulls more and more away.

_It's like watching a puppy get scolded or something._

Ashley shakes her head at that thought, because it is overly-maudlin.  
And she hasn't had a drink in over a year now, so she cannot blame alcohol for such a sentimental moment.  
But there is a second where Ashley looks over at Kyla, sees her sister worrying that bottom lip as she did as a kid, and Ashley has nothing whatsoever to blame for the words that come tumbling out of her mouth.

"Want to play a game, Ky?"

Later she'll claim temporary insanity.  
Later she'll say that this is a delayed side-effect of being clean.  
Ashley will blame the silence - the not-talking that is going on between Aiden and Spencer, between Spencer and Madison - and Ashley will blame this trip for a whole lot of things.

_Things like kisses. Things like hands held. Things like confessions. Things like watching worlds end and begin again._

But Ashley decides all of that can happen later, though.

"What?"  
"I don't know... what is that one, where you point out things and the other person has to guess at it-"  
"I Spy? You want to play I Spy?"

Kyla looks almost freaked out by the notion and Ashley kind of wants to laugh at her sister's expression. But Ashley guesses that such a suggestion is a little shocking coming from her.  
When they were kids, the two of them in the back seat as their parents dragged them to family functions or carried them to the zoo or any event that took longer than thirty minutes to get to, they would always play a game of some sort.

It was fun, back then, with everything simple and kind and seemingly perfect.  
It was fun, back then, two sisters just goofing around and having a good time.

Of course, they are not children anymore.  
And this is less about fun and more about getting by.  
But it is still about killing time.

"...Okay." And Kyla smiles, gentle and cautious at the same time.  
And Ashley smiles back, nervous and eager at the same time.

And Ashley will blame this trip for a lot of things.  
But they won't all be bad, you know.

_Not bad at all this time._

/ / /

_It's just another cross. It's just another climb._

And there are still cuts that go too deep, still things that must be carved down into stone.  
But the wheels keep on turning and no one mentions going back now.  
They are too far gone along, anyway, too close to the finish line and all its unknown promise, all its hidden potential.

What started out as Kyla and Ashley - a yellow wrapper under a seat, a shade of red on a billboard, all manner of blue and it was never the sky - becomes Madison, too.

Madison shifts in the passenger seat, rolling her eyes when Kyla is stumped, and delivers her own answer.

"It's the **road**, Kyla."  
"That's** not **black! It's... gray or something..."  
"Am I right, Ashley?"

And Madison is grinning, waiting for victory. And Kyla is boring holes into the side of Ashley's face. And Ashley sort of subconsciously moves away from her sister, not even noticing the way her body leans to the right.

"Sorry, Ky, she's got it."  
"The road is not black, okay, Ash. It is **gray**. It's the color of... it's the color of the** fucking **road!"

And Ashley blinks rapidly, not sure what to say or do, caught off guard by her sister's sudden outburst.  
But Madison sort of chokes out some form of laughter, covering her mouth with one hand and waving the other in silent humor.  
Then, from the very back, comes another snort of laughter. It tries to stay quiet, but Ashley catches it and flicks her still somewhat-wide gaze to the blonde behind her.

Spencer's lips are fighting the urge to turn upwards and there is a light to those blue eyes that Ashley knew had gone missing, for just a bit, but - in this tiny moment - has returned.  
It makes them sort of dance. It makes them kind of shine.

_It makes them lovely._

And Spencer cannot help it, she smiles and chuckles and tries to apologize when Kyla levels her with an annoyed glare.

"What is so **damn **funny?"

But that just seems to set Madison and Spencer off more. And Ashley finds her own lips moving, stretching out in a way that she had forgotten about.  
Not a lazy grin, born of liquid lovers.  
Not a shattered grimace, still to close to crying.  
It is a smile, first full one in such a long time.  
An actual smile that keeps growing and develops into a rumble of laughter, bubbling up in Ashley's chest and pushing forth like a bud reaching for the sun.

"Kyla, you cussing is **always** funny."

And like a circle coming around, Aiden's voice merges with the rest of them from the driver's seat. And his voice does not create tension, it settles things.  
No one is going to solve these life equations in one day, one week, one month... maybe not even after one year. Maybe it'll be the kind of trip that never truly ends, even as they reach the Keys and even as they head back to California.

_What is it that they say? Rome wasn't built in a day._

"Fuck." And Kyla points at Aiden, his smiling face in the rear-view mirror.  
"You." And Kyla points at Madison, who is still giggling some.  
"**All**." And Kyla sweeps her index finger over the whole interior of the car, her voice going up a little too high, and Ashley winces even as she continues to be amused as well.  
"And **there** it is!" Madison crows happily and Aiden laughs out loud now.  
"I think she's finally done it, I can't hear out of my left ear!" Spencer exclaims, ducking back with a bark of laughter as Kyla flings a magazine at her head.

And Ashley watches the four of them, listens to the humor and her sister's annoyed grumbling. And she catches Kyla's gaze, briefly, and sees those brown eyes.

There is a light in them, too. A bright and wonderful light that Ashley didn't know if she'd ever see again, all her days spent running and disappearing.  
But it is there now, right in front of her, a light unlike any other - happiness and affection - and Kyla is handing it out for Ashley to grasp and to have.

/ / /

Fifty miles from Tennessee is a cross, too.  
And Ashley doesn't want to live in illusions anymore.

So, Ashley reaches out and takes hold.

And she climbs.

/ / /

**TBC**


	18. you know the light ain't fading from you

_"A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature and swings there as easily as a star." _**- **_**Edwin Hubbel Chapin, 1814 - 1880**_

Because that was never you, not really.

You were always more than a drink and more than hit. You were always more than an absentee daughter. You were always more than a shitty sibling.

You were always Ashley Davies, weren't you?

And maybe you got lost along the way. Maybe you slipped and fell and didn't know how to get back up again. Maybe you turned down the wrong roads, maybe you ignored the warning signs that flashed before your eyes, maybe you did it all on purpose because you thought you **had** to.

But you've stopped blaming a child who couldn't speak up.  
You've stopped hating a girl who couldn't be like everyone else.  
You've stopped running, haven't you?

And there you are, Ashley Davies, there you are - sliding into the world that was built for you, long before you felt the terror and long after you came back down.

There you are, walking beside your sister and listening to the girl talk animatedly about some professor you don't know. There you are, looking at Madison's soft smile and nodding head. There you are, noting Aiden's warm grin as he holds open the door for each of you.  
And there you are, catching a glance from Spencer as she sits beside you in this tattered red booth in this sticky-floor diner, blue gaze a little shy and a little brave and a little perfect.

There you are, Ashley Davies.  
Reflected back in the faces of four people, against the table-top and in the glass of water in your hand, there you are.  
On the road and in the slowly darkening sky, the first hint of stars and of the moon, there you are. There you are, far from home... and yet, closer than ever before.

Because that was never you, not really.  
That wound and that sorrow, that was never you - that was the mask, that was the costume you wore. And you won't forget it, but you can finally forgive it.

Because, maybe, you had to be that way to survive. But now you want more than just survival.

You want to thrive.

/ / /

"That looks good."

Spencer's voice is low, just for one person to hear, and Ashley sort of tilts her head towards the sound. They look at each other, a swift glance, then back to sideways staring.

"It is good."

Ashley responds quietly, fork going through this overly-large waffle with ease. Spencer's shoulder gently collides with her own, an almost teasing nudge, a flirtation with affection.

It's new for both of them, to make moves and not hide from them after the fact.  
It's new for Ashley to accept them.  
It's new for Spencer to initiate them.

And the rest of this group continues with idle conversation - Aiden talks about the first time he was caught sneaking out of the house by his parents, which leads to Madison talking about the first time she got grounded. Kyla joins in, but from a different place, one much younger than teenage indiscretions.  
Kyla talks about dogs let in with dirty paws and food fights gone horribly wrong.

But that is a safer realm to talk about and Ashley understands.  
Aiden and Madison had that movie-screen youth, filled with minor disturbances and small hiccups, but mostly fun and uneventful.  
Ashley and Kyla have a different tale to tell.

Still, Ashley is not focused on the other three around this booth - they lurk around the edges of her vision tonight. She's not paying attention to the waitresses who walk about and the boys who wipe down the tables.  
She is not taking note of the people who stroll in through the door, bell chiming every time.

Ashley is watching Spencer, even if brown eyes stay on the syrup covered dish in front of her.  
And she knows that Spencer is doing the very same thing.

"You **could** share, you know..."

Spencer's tone is light and sweet, the kind of voice a person could wait a lifetime to hear, and Ashley is not immune to it.  
She hasn't been immune to Spencer this entire time.  
Because she not only sees this blonde woman - in the morning light, legs moving along a trail, strands of gold between fingers - but Ashley sees herself in Spencer.  
The fear and the need and all the moments left to flounder, all the moments yet to grow.  
It is strange to witness your own actions in another person.  
It is odd to know their motivations before you know their favorite color or their favorite song.

It is intimate and it is scary.

And the Ashley of old would have backed away, would have pushed that door open and fled.  
This Ashley, though, she knows to just tread easily and let things be.

_It doesn't always have to be hard. It doesn't always have to be a fight._

The fork cuts one direction and then goes the opposite way, producing a triangle of butter and maple goodness. And Ashley hands the utensil over then, Spencer's skin brushing against her own.  
And that blue is shining, eager and hopeful.  
And Ashley knows that the same tint is in her own gaze.

It's new to both of them, trying instead of abdicating, being instead of pretending.

"It's yours then."

Of course, this is about more than a waffle somewhere in Tennessee.  
It is about so much more.

And Ashley thinks that they both know it, too.

/ / /

Still, she strays and Ashley sees Aiden looking away, out the window to the shadowed parking lot of this restaurant... Not wanting to look too closely at the girl he has had to set free, not yet.

And he doesn't say a word about it. Not that she expected him to. Poets - even if only at heart - don't shout their feelings. They don't scream and shout.  
They take it all in and they write about it later, giving over to the pages and the ink all of their endless emotion.

Like meeting a beautiful girl.  
Like falling in love.  
Like struggling with life, what you want to keep but cannot hold on to.  
Like watching love rot, an apple you never get to pick and never get to fully taste.

Ashley wrote about agony, too. She just did it with spoken lies, with glorious seconds where she forgot all she had left behind.  
Her story got told in those darkest hours, after the parties died down and the users were passed out. There, in her wounded eyes, Ashley wrote her biography.

_Like the nights spent trashed and hollow. Like the days spent chasing another high.  
Like holidays locked away in a single room. Like birthdays cursed instead of celebrated._

Madison and Kyla are talking about some film, some trashy piece of work that makes them chuckle, and Aiden clears his throat just a bit - a subtle sign that this poet is still adjusting, still trying to find the right words.  
Ashley catches it and she knows that Spencer catches it, too.

"Hey, Kyla, could you move a sec? I, uh, need to step outside for a bit."

His voice isn't shattered, but it is fragile - in its own way, in its own fashion.  
And Spencer wants to reach out, Ashley can see it on the girl's face.  
That urge to mend what one has cut, to heal where one has caused harm. Ashley has the same sensations well up inside of her every time she looks at Kyla, every time she holds that phone in her palm and imagines calling her mother, calling her father.

_If you tear the world apart, you've got to be prepared to clean up the rubble._

This a step, too.  
Ashley has the list memorized, ladder rungs that used to bring the afflicted to God and God's mercy, but now ask for self-responsibility along with admittance and with apologies.  
God might be up there, somewhere, praying for a messed up girl or a broken boy.  
But Ashley saw her own face every day in rehab, saw the consequences of her life up until that moment, and it was up to her to fix it.

It is still up to Ashley to put herself back together again.

"Um, I'll... I'll be back, okay?" Spencer addresses the rest of them, slipping out of the seat, a brief smile left in her wake.  
And they watch her go out the door, hear that bell chime, and all is quiet again.  
Kyla sips her coffee. Madison slowly eats one fry. Ashley pushes her plate to the side.

"Well, I did promise that this would be like Melrose Place on wheels..." Madison says with an easy grin and Kyla rolls her eyes in response.  
"It's certainly different than what I was expecting." Kyla murmurs in slight agreement, raising that coffee mug once more.  
"It hasn't been **all** rough going, though." And Madison shoots a wink in Ashley's direction, to which Ashley shakes her head good-naturedly.  
Kyla notices this and develops a sly grin upon her lips, leaning forward and propping her chin up on her fist.  
"...Did you two hook up or something?"

And Ashley chokes a bit on her water whereas Madison releases a delighted peel of laughter, causing heads to turn their direction - truck drivers and annoyed elderly men who do not like too much noise to disrupt their nightly routine.

"No, Ky." Ashley responds as Madison reaches over and pats her back for a second or two.  
It is a friendly sort of action. It is without serious intent. It is kind of nice and Ashley kind of likes it, kind of likes the idea of having a friend at all.  
It's been a long time since she has had one, one who was sober and one who gave a damn just because they could.

"I tried, Kyla, but I think your sister is interested in someone else."  
"Hmm... Yea, I think that's probably true."

And they are both looking at her. And Ashley feels a sudden sympathy for poor creatures that end up under the microscope, studied with clinical stares.  
She hates to flinch under the appraisal, but she does and it flusters her.  
It flusters her to be obvious, to be revealed, to show her hand so clearly.

It isn't shame, though.

_It is plain old embarrassment, like I am going on a first damn date or something._

And it's been a long time since Ashley has felt something so innocent, so normal.  
It's kind of nice, too.

_Still embarrassing as fuck... but nice._

"You **do** like her, don't you?" Kyla questions, nothing on her face that speaks of disapproval.  
Just interest. Just curiosity.  
"Who?" Ashley stalls, turning her glass of water back and forth.  
"Oh Ashley, **please**. You like Spencer." Madison answers for her, folding her arms and leveling her with a pointed look.

And she does like Spencer. She really does.  
Ashley likes someone and it has nothing to do with scoring, nothing to do with fading away from the world.

_And that's kind of nice, too._

"Yea, I like her."

And they chuckle at her expense, at her sweetly simple truth, but Ashley doesn't mind so much. In fact, she really doesn't mind at all.

"Can't blame you. She's very likable." Madison says with a shrug.  
"Yea, if I were gay, I'd hit that." Kyla mentions with a nod.

Ashley actually laughs out loud this time, with Madison's rolling giggle joining in and Kyla throws them both a cheeky grin in return.  
And as if it was part of some script, all three of them turn their amused eyes towards that parking lot and to that former couple outside, faces barely illuminated by lamp-light overhead.  
To look at the missing parts of this crazy little journey, to the girl that Ashley likes and to those friends built over years and to that poet with his heart on his sleeve.  
To Aiden and Spencer, talking out their damages with each other, trying to salvage whatever is still good and set loose all that was wrong.  
Trying to make things right again.

"I always knew something was up, you know? Always knew there was **something** she wasn't telling me. But I just don't get it... I mean, it's **me**. I sleep with men and women. She could have told me, I wouldn't have cared."

Ashley could answer Madison, using her own experiences with duck-and-cover as the template, and it wouldn't be an exact match with Spencer - but it would be damn close.  
She could talk about how overwhelming it can be to hold the honesty in your soul, but being too terrified to live with it - the family you might lose, the insults you might have to weather, the longing you cannot seem to reconcile with the anguish you feel.

She could tell about every kiss given to some guy, washing away the taint of falsehood with never-ending shots, and how her drunken leer would still fall upon some girl in those blacklighted clubs.  
And the desire would spook her into some guy's bed, into some hurried sniff of cocaine.  
Spencer did her smoke and mirrors act with Aiden.  
Ashley did hers with anything she could get her hands on.

Ashley could answer, but she won't.  
There are other friendships that must be worked out on this trip now, other relationships that get the chance to grow or wither away.

"I think that sometimes... well, it must be hard to talk about things... It must be hard to let someone in if you've spent so long keeping everyone away."

And Kyla can't help but glance at Ashley as she says this.  
And Ashley can't help but reach out, slowly and steadily, grabbing a hold of her sister's hand.  
Holding and cherishing Kyla, like the girl was always meant to be regarded, like Ashley always **meant **to do.  
And Kyla stares at the hand within her own, eyes on skin of the same color as hers, eyes on the sister she feared forever gone.  
And Ashley closes her eyes and holds on tight.

Holds on like she'll never let go.

_And I won't, not this time. I won't let go this time._

/ / /

They'll get hotel rooms tonight.  
And Aiden will opt to get a single, even as Kyla and Madison both ask him to stay with them, claiming that a make-over is what he needs. But he'll laugh their offer away, not to be unkind, but he still needs time.  
And they'll understand and they'll hug him, the good kind of hug, strong and sure.

He'll look at Spencer and sort of smile.  
And Spencer will do the same thing.

Kyla will pull Ashley to her and wrap arms about her neck, kissing the side of Ashley's face.  
And she'll whisper something wonderful, something pure, something so missed and so needed and so wanted.  
And it won't be anything special to the rest of the universe, but it'll mean the world to Ashley.

_'I love you so much.'_

Spencer will walk up to Madison and they'll stand side by side, looking out over the highway that only rests a hundred feet away, tail-lights for miles and miles.  
And they'll look at one another and Spencer will apologize, for a million and one things.  
And Madison will forgive, because she wants to. Because she's always wanted to know this Spencer, the real Spencer, the Spencer who likes girls more than boys.  
They'll work it out, over time, they'll be better than they ever were.

And the lights will get turned out.  
And they will all fall asleep.  
And morning will come, with the interstate calling, pulling them nearer and nearer to the finish line.

And as the dawn starts to break, where everything is silent and peaceful, Ashley will wake up.  
She'll blink her eyes and stretch her limbs and hear the bones pop.  
And then she'll see Spencer, inches away, lips parted and hair a mess and gorgeous in her tank top and shorts. And they haven't even properly kissed yet, but Ashley has a feeling that they might, one day soon.

One day soon, they'll share more than memories and an automobile.

One day soon, they'll share everything.

/ / /

**TBC**


	19. should've seen the rattling in my brain

**Ugh.**

/ / /

_God gave us memories that we might have roses in December_ - **J.M. Barrie, **_**Courage**_**,  
1922**

Tortured and tempted, she ran fast and furious and head-long into danger. And that's the way she dealt with what she was losing, with what she was locking away within herself.

And memories were the shadows always nipping at her heels.

To remember was to feel the pain all over again, so she ran like the wind.  
Faster and faster, down the tunnels of her mind, a labyrinth only she could master and, eventually, a maze that not even she could fathom.  
But to remember was to see all that she was losing and all that she was afraid of.

Because once you look in the mirror, you can no longer deny.

Memories, bittersweet and hazy and as pure as one allows them to be, they were the trip-wire of her heart - all the steps she took to avoid, but she walks right through and sets the landscape to exploding, dropping to the ground as everything she built came tumbling down.

Memories, what was and what one wants to have been, they taunted with every drink and every lackluster kiss that drifted into more - until she could erase them, temporarily, in narcotic oblivion and eyes rolling back as if trying to see where this sorrow came from.

Memories, now she'll never forget them and that's alright and that's okay - she recalls a little girl, bright and sure, looking back from her own face. And she recalls a hand that she held, sweaty against her own, as hot sand burned their feet. And she feels strong arms around her. And she hears their laughter.

And where it was once a curse, it is now a joy.  
And where it was once a knife into her chest, it is the steady beat of blood again.

Where she once ran, Ashley stands still and images hit her like drops of rain.  
And they sting sometimes and they caress sometimes and they begin to wash her clean.

/ / /

They reach Knoxville, stopping for bathroom breaks and for food. Aiden buys a John Deere hat and wears it backwards. Madison and Kyla get matching bandanas. The two of them try to convince Ashley to do the same, but she declines with tiny grin.  
And Spencer holds the map, waving it in front of everyone's eyes, showing them that their time on Interstate 40 is over and that Interstate 75 awaits to carry them south.

And they pass through Georgia soon, tall pines beside them and humidity hanging from every limb, dipping in and out of towns like Tifton and Cordele. And Kyla tries to speak with a 'southern' accent and they all tell her she has failed.  
Aiden drags them to every little gas station he can, pointing out the picked eggs in a jar and pigs feet in another jar. That's when Madison forces everyone to use hand sanitizer after every stop.  
They get cold lemonade to drink and each one of them sweats more than is normal, even with the air conditioner on. And as they near the Florida state line, brief shouts of excitement from the college-four ring out in the SUV, making Ashley smile to herself.

And Kyla nudges her, playful and teasing.

"You better shout out, too, Ash."

Ashley shakes her head, still smiling.

"Not going to happen, Ky."  
"Ashhhhhleyyyyyy..."

And she knows that voice, knows that tone. She hasn't heard it in so long, flashes of braided hair and pouting lips with a game laid out on the floor. Begging to play. Begging to be acknowledged. Begging for her sister's attention.

The memory rushes before her, but not with malice and not to attack, simply to remind.  
To remind and to slip back inside of Ashley's soul, back where it belongs.

Ashley holds out her hand to Kyla, watching as the girl slowly reaches out in return. And then they are together, back where they belong, two sisters who have always had each other - just one of them got lost along the way, one of them didn't know how to fix what had broken.

"Madison?" Ashley pipes up and the woman looks at her in the rear-view.  
"Yea?"  
"Put down the back windows."  
"Sure."

And Kyla looks curious and giddy and Ashley is awash in what used to be, in what could have been, in what will be. All there, holding Kyla's hand and the heat of the evening flooding in and blowing back their hair with a warm grace.

"On three, Ky... okay?"

And the girl smiles and nods and a piece finally settles inside of Ashley's battered heart.  
It finally fits again. It finally feels good. It finally feels right.

"One..." Ashley starts and she catches a grin from Madison up front and behind the wheel.  
"...Two..." Kyla continues and from the corner of her gaze, Ashley sees Spencer to the side and blue eyes are trained on Ashley with a caring previously unimaginable.  
"...**Three**..." They both say louder than before and then it barrels up from their chests, rolling out of their throats and past the teeth and over the tongues and they create a haphazard symphony in this car and, somewhere in between Georgia and Florida, a shout echoes up into the dusky sky and carries on and on - all the way back to California, all the way back to two little girls who need to hear it and who still believe in forever.

And Aiden joins in, then Spencer, then Madison, all of them shouting and hollering and the rest of the windows go down and there is laughing and smiling and howls and screaming.

Ashley holds on to her sister, the one she shut the door on and the one she has now found.  
And she shouts. And she yells. And she finally feels at home within herself and that just makes Ashley yell even louder, as loud as she can, not minding the fact that among her happiness are tears - sliding down her face and evaporating in the summer breeze.

/ / /

The Tomoka River reflects the moonlight and, if you look closely, you can see the ripples caused from unseen creatures spread out and then disappear.  
The snap of distant branches and the murmur of other campers, then a calming silence again, the kind of quiet that is hard to find in a city, the kind of quiet that is hard to find inside of yourself as well.

"If I didn't know you were sitting here, I'd think you were gone."

Spencer's comment does not intrude upon Ashley thoughts, not like before when they were both aching to speak and desperate to not say the wrong thing.  
There isn't a heaviness between them now, only the possibility of what could happen.  
And it brings a gentleness to Spencer's voice, an open quality that cannot be falsified.  
And it carries even more confidence into Ashley's body, causes her to smile over at the blonde and to wait for the gesture to be returned.

_Which it is. Which it always is these days._

"Oh...uh, sorry, I just wasn't tired yet and thought I'd sit out here..." Aiden says from a few feet away, his bare feet visible against the ground, and Spencer looks over with an easy grin.  
"No problem. Unlike you two, I am **beat**. So good-night all."

And Aiden's head moves in the darkness, seen but not, a simple nod of acceptance.  
And his poet eyes look away, maybe for his sake and maybe for their sake as well, when Spencer ducks down and gathers Ashley into a solid embrace.

Without tears and confessions hanging around them, this is their first real hug. Ashley feels it right down to her toes, sensations that have been long denied and comfort that she used to think she did not need, did not deserve - all of it, right there, in a pair of arms around her shoulders.  
And she slowly does the same, arms moving and going around the blonde's shoulders, and her eyes close involuntarily.

_This is feels good. __**Too **__good. It shouldn't feel this good just to hug someone... should it?_

But it must feel the same way to Spencer, because the girl sighs and it flutters against Ashley's cheek as she pulls away.

"Night." Spencer whispers, near Ashley's cheek, so near to everything else that they could do, if they take the chance, if they take that last step.  
And Ashley sort of clears her throat and lets her arms drop back down, hands into her lap.  
"Night." Ashley softly replies.

She waves at them both once more and then enters one of the tents, Ashley's to be exact, leaving Aiden and Ashley alone for the first time on this trip.

_Lots of firsts tonight, Ashley. Let's hope they are all as good as the last one._

There they are, not rivals in the slightest. There is no fight between them, no duel to the death. They will not slap each other with gloves and draw swords for some fair maidens hand. Life is not a fairy tale.

Ashley learned that at the age of thirteen, watching the fantasy shatter and not knowing how to pick up her feet and figure it all out.  
Aiden learned this fact recently, that tapping to his back turned into a shove, pushing him where he didn't want to go - but where he knew he would have to soon reside.  
But, still, they have not talked to each other.  
They talk around each other and they are civil and Ashley doesn't sense anger, does not feel his eyes on her like a target to hit. It's more like they are uncomfortable with one another, knowing what they know and seeing what they've seen, exposed when neither of them were looking.

"I... I didn't mean to interrupt." Aiden says quietly, gaze trained out on the river. And she glances at him quickly before focusing her stare to that river as well.  
"You didn't interrupt anything." Ashley responds, hands clasped tight to stop that old habit from kicking in, wanting to beating out this nervousness against her knees.

But she hears his body settle to the ground, not too close and not too far away, and she can hear the breath leave his lips, can hear him reclaim that air again and let it fill up his lungs. And as if seeking a routine to follow, Ashley's body does the same - breathe in, breathe out, repeat.

The two of them, in the middle of the night, just breathing as the river rolls onward and the other campers seem to fade into the darkness and the wildlife takes the universe over in those trees, in that water.

"She's happier. I can tell." Aiden breaks the minutes and minutes of silence. And that's all he needed, Ashley guesses, a chance to formulate the sentences and an opportunity to say what needs to be said - in order to set it free.

For his own sake, for the poet in him who still believes in forever - just like sisters in California, just like Spencer before her days of lying to get by.

"That's all I want for her, you know? To be** happy**, like the day I met her... but maybe better than that even... Maybe it can be better than that... right? Maybe we can all do more than just... **exist**. Is that possible?"

And she's not sure if that question is hypothetical or not, a musing out loud or if he is actually waiting for an answer. But her lips move without much reservation, much like her arms moved earlier and took Spencer in, again going on instinct and hoping for the best.

"It's possible. If we want it to be."

/ / /

If we want to be whole. If we want to be real. If we want to be okay, if we want to be **better** than okay.

If we want to say good-bye to the past, sitting out in the hot Florida night with your back against the cool ground, hand under your head and glimpses of stars past the canopy of trees and wanderlust dreams beating in your chest.

If we want to be a part of the future, noticing how her face is tilted in your direction even as she sleeps and wondering if magic might rest in those now-closed eyes of blue, if she has bewitched you somehow, and finding that you do not care if she has.

If we want to be better than okay, if we want it all...

/ / /

It's all possible.

If we want it to be.

/ / /

**TBC**


	20. and we are so darn proud of you

**So, after some angst over the last chapter and some thinking about the end of this story and a little chat with someone who basically read my mind (in a sense), I realized that my angst was over the fact that this story was actually at the end - and I was trying to drag the story out longer than it needed to go.**

**With a few minor differences, this is exactly the ending I had envisioned. May you enjoy it. Or... not. Either way, this has be a delight to write and very cathartic for me.**

**Thanks for the reviews and for taking the time to read this! I appreciate it. :)**

/ / /

_"The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up"_. - **Charles L. Morgan (22 January 1894 – 6 February 1958)**

Growing up.  
Leaving behind all that you have held on to, the former misery and all the previous notions. Every image of yourself - a childish smile, a naive belief in ever-after, a broken home, a shattered sense of self, the endless weeping and the never-ending hope you just couldn't kill.

You, in front of that mirror, skin pulled tight over newly formed shapes and eyes that dig in deeper and see those other differences, those other new places within, that part of you that cannot be denied. Oh, but you'll try, you'll try for years to deny them. To deny them, to drive them away, to turn them into the enemy.

You, leaning against a wall, sick to your stomach and dry heaving and crying from the physical pain, from the hollowness, from the lack of anyone to trust - not even yourself, especially not yourself, not who you are now... Against this wall and your arms ache and your mind is clouded and nothing is right, but you don't know how to fix it. You don't know who to run to when you cannot even seek out yourself.

You, sitting in that circle and talking in a whisper, because you aren't sure you can speak at all. You've used up all your hours, haven't you? You've gone too far, right? You are not so easy to save and you are not so sure you can be saved now. But you whisper and you shake and you feel the air enter your lungs and you keep on talking even as your throat threatens to close up.  
You whisper and one day you speak and one day you shout.

Growing up.  
You are not eight years old anymore, caught up in a photographic life, with a father's truth and a mother's care. You are not the older sister, taking Kyla's hand, pulling her up the stairs when the shouting first begins, when the cracks show themselves.  
Growing up.  
You are not fourteen years old anymore, fearful of the shadows that creep along your body and the lies you'll have to live and the chance at love you'll have to leave behind. You are not that young girl, drinking until you cannot remember that a boy is touching you and that you'd give anything for it to be softer, sweeter, more like your own hands, more like a girl would.  
Growing up.  
You are not twenty-one years old anymore, strung out and useless on the floor, surrounded by faces you do not know and names you cannot recall. You are no longer the marks along your flesh, no longer the smoke curling around your mouth, no longer the chipped shot glass in your grip. You aren't that bloodshot nightmare, the one you could never seem to wake up from, that's not you anymore.

But who are you, hmm?  
Who are you now, with all that behind you, but somehow still inside of you - gone but not forgotten - who are you now?

/ / /

Ashley opens her eyes.

And further away, there is Kyla, running along the shore and yelping in sudden amusement as Aiden picks her up and spins her around and carries her to the ocean. There is Madison, giggling, and a pair of big sunglasses covering up her pretty eyes. And Spencer stands beside Madison, golden hair fluttering in the breeze off the waves, lips moving in what looks to be happy chatter. And Aiden's laugh carries over the air, booming and broad and wild, trying to escape a soaked Kyla as she chases him down.  
He runs to Madison and uses her as a shield, which does not work, and Kyla tackles them. They fall to a heap on the wet sand, grappling playfully with each other and Spencer is backing away, laughing and waving her hands to avoid getting involved.

And Ashley's feet are moving, without thought but not without intent, pressing into the sand with a heel-to-toe motion. And she takes a deep breath as she gets closer, reaching out quick before she can change her mind.  
Her hands grab a hold of Spencer's arm and the girl turns around, grinning.

"They're obviously crazy..." Spencer starts off, but the blonde must sense something is about to happen, the way her gaze narrows and one eyebrow quirks upward.  
And Ashley smiles, smiles like she really means it, and she gets Spencer's other arm and starts to tug.  
Those blue eyes widen and those feet start to dig in and Ashley's smile only grows bigger.

"No, Ashley... no** fucking **way, you better **let**... **me**... **go**!" Spencer's voice goes from low to loud in seconds and Ashley is pulling and Spencer is pulling back, their activity garnering the attention of the other three on the ground.  
"Not gonna happen." Ashley replies with a negative shake of her head, noticing a trio of smirks from over Spencer's shoulder.

And the poor girl didn't have a shot in hell after that.

Ashley finds it hard to run and laugh at the same time, but being caught by Spencer Carlin is not part of her plan. So, difficulty in breathing is a small price to pay as they all scatter from the blonde.

Of course, even irate and drenched, Ashley thinks the girl is pretty damn beautiful.

_Pissed off, but beautiful._

Kyla and Madison do the smart thing, flying past Ashley and up onto one of the walkways, sandy footprints carrying them to the SUV and perceived safety. Aiden tries to do a bit of backwards taunting, which ends up with him falling back and onto the ground. He scrambles for a second, doing a version of that crab-walk everyone did as a little kid, hands and feet working at odds with each other. But Spencer has two fists full of sand and flings it at him, triumphant smirk on her lips as he sputters and wipes his face off with a good-humored scowl.

Ashley shouldn't have stopped to watch, though.

And Spencer is off like a bolt of lightning and Ashley is tripping over her own feet as she tries to pick up speed in the dry sand she has found herself in.  
But an arm snags her tight around the waist and then the other arm follows suit and down they go. They roll for a second or two and Spencer is able to pin Ashley down.  
Strings of wet hair dangle in front of Ashley's gaze and Spencer's face takes up the rest of the available view, out of breath and pleased.

"Thought you could throw me in the ocean and get away with it, eh?" Spencer says, fingers around Ashley's wrists and knees on either side of Ashley's hips.  
"Yep." Ashley responds with a faint chuckle and Spencer glares at her, but instead of it being a hard expression, it is kind. It is warm. It is affectionate.  
"Well, then... you thought **wrong**..." Spencer says softly and one of those fingers moves just a little, going from grasping to sliding, caressing the inside of Ashley's wrist.  
And Ashley feels her heart beating rapidly in her chest.  
And she sees the sunlight slip through Spencer's hair, creating afternoon shadows on both of their faces. Spencer blinks once, eyelashes slowly closing and then fluttering open again.

_I could spend my whole life with you looking at me like that and be content._

The thought springs to life and careens around Ashley's body, trembling in her bones and heating up her blood and causing her pupils to dilate, the air to catch along her tongue.  
The thought dares to come out, to leave her mouth and become words, to be declared.  
It is a moment. Maybe one of many. She **hopes** it is one of many. Ashley is hopeful, after so many years of feeling hopeless. She has hope for so many many things now.

_This is but one. This is only the beginning of what I want._

"Aiden!" Spencer shouts and Ashley is knocked away from her musings, deciding now is the time to struggle. But Spencer is sort of strong and Ashley is only partly away, arms free, but legs still tangled up with Spencer's. That's when Aiden arrives, hands on his hips like a disapproving parent.

"Yesssss?"  
"Ashley needs to cool off. Wanna help?"

Both of their faces light up with mirth and evil motives and Ashley does her best, she really does, and she tries to break away from them.  
They have her, though. And she fights and she pleads with them both - Spencer's just sticks her tongue out and says something along the lines of 'serves you right', whereas Aiden's grin just widens and they both drag Ashley a bit faster and there is no way to stop it now. They use momentum to make it happen, pulling and pushing and spinning Ashley's body along, until she goes in sideways and the end of a salt-water wave washes over her flailing form.  
And she can hear them laughing.  
And she can hear herself laughing, too, even as she chokes on some of that water.

The three of them start up all over again, running and chasing and falling down. Madison and Kyla finally turn up from their hiding place, joining back in on the mayhem, until all of them are covered in sand and have been shoved into the sea more than once.  
It goes on for hours it seems, contagious feelings of joy that get passed along from each smile to each giggle to each touch from one person to another.  
Freedom in their steps and in their voices and in their total abandonment of all that has been, of all that has come before, of all the relationships that had to change and that had to end, of all the used-to-be's and all the once-upon-a-times - they let it all go.

And they run.  
And they run faster.  
And they run more and more.

The five of them run until the sun dies from the sky.

/ / /

Who are you now?

Every road and every path, every hallway and every sidewalk, every room and every set of stairs, every bar and every party, every kiss and every touch, every tear and every fist into a wall, every hit and every snort and every pill and every pull from the bottle, every dream you never let go of and every wish you never reached for, every call you didn't make and every answer you tried to give, every drop of sweat and every cold you caught, every false friend and every bit of real loneliness, every card tucked away and every birthday missed, every time you looked up and every time you fell down, every time you talked and every time you stayed silent, every hand that holds you back and every hand that pulls you forward, every second of every moment of your existence.

You are where you came from and where you are going, too.

You are Ashley Davies, that's who are you are now.

Nothing more.  
But certainly nothing less.

/ / /

They drive for another four hours or so, reaching the Keys around two in the morning. And they all eat junk food along the way, bags of Skittles and chips and such.  
Madison starts chanting about wanting a hot shower, saying there is sand in uncomfortable places and a wash-off just wouldn't cut it. And while most motels expect you to check-in much early in the day - this is the Keys.

Rules do not apply here.

They find a little place covered in sea-foam green and pale pink, hurricane paintings on the wall and conch shells all over. But it is cheap and it has running water and so they all crash in one room with two beds. There is a round of rock-paper-scissors to see who would end up on the floor, which turns out to be Kyla.

"This is so not fair!" Kyla exclaims for the third time. "Aiden **cheated**!"  
"How did I cheat?" Aiden retorts.  
"You just **did**. Cheater. Besides, you're the only guy, **you** should do the right thing and sleep on the floor."  
"Hey, we **all **agreed to one game of rock-paper-scissors, Kyla. And you lost, so** there**."

Madison is pursing her lips in order to not laugh out loud, but she is shooting Ashley an amused look and Ashley is grinning a bit herself. When Spencer comes in, more machine-quality snacks in her hands, she stops short upon seeing the vague stare-off between Aiden and Kyla.

"Okay, what did I miss?" Spencer asks.  
"Oh, Kyla is still ranting." Madison answers. Spencer chuckles and dumps the food onto one of the beds.  
"Nothing new then." Spencer mumbles, earning a pillow to the head. "**Hey**!"  
"All of you **suck**." Kyla states, stomping off to the bathroom with that pillow still in her grasp, none of them knowing how she got a hold of it in the first place.  
When water of the shower starts up, Madison finally feels safe enough to start laughing.  
"Well, there goes all the hot water..." Aiden mutters with a roll of his eyes, snatching a pack of crackers and flopping back the other bed.  
"Oh, shebetter noteven **think** of doing that or I'll flush the toilet right now." Madison states with a chuckle, but none of them doubt that she'd do it - to Kyla or to the rest of them.

Ashley turns her eyes back to the assortment of snacks, trying to decide between a Twix or a Butterfinger, when Spencer's shoulder gently nudges into her own.

"Something tasty has caught your eye?" Spencer's voice is light and slightly teasing. Ashley does not look over at the girl, but the slight smile on her own face is undeniable.  
"More than one something actually."  
"Oh, well, no **wonder** you look so serious..."  
And it's like she can hear Spencer's grin, can feel how close they are to each other. Ashley's head is leaning towards Spencer even as her gaze stays on the plethora of bad-for-you food.  
"This** is **serious business. Twix or Butterfinger. This decision could make or break the rest of my night." Ashley says quietly, letting her shoulder do the moving this time, bumping into Spencer's. She just doesn't move away. They stay pressed against one another, shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm.

And she hears Spencer take a breath, short and quick, followed by a subtle swallow rolling up and down her throat.

"Then, uh, let me help you out..." And Spencer reaches down, grabbing the Butterfinger.  
Ashley grabs the Twix and they finally look at each other and everything with them is a moment now. Candy or beaches or campgrounds or car rides - they are perpetually in a moment with one another, each one building up to something.

_Something good. Something real. Something amazing._

"Thanks." Ashley hushes out and Spencer nods quietly.  
"Your welcome."

The door to the bathroom opens, steam pouring out, and Kyla comes out in her pajamas. Madison doesn't wait to ask or see if anyone else wants to go next, she just grabs a towel and darts right in. And when there isn't any angry cursing, they all know that Kyla might have been irrationally ticked off but she knew better than to use up all the hot water.

Aiden is trying to win Kyla over with cracker-bribes. And Kyla is being stubborn, but Ashley can see her sister slowly cracking, trying hard not to grin and laugh.  
Then Kyla looks over at her, face flush from the heat of the shower and eyes bright, and Ashley thinks her sister is lovely - vibrant and sweet and so much more rare of a find than anyone could ever imagine.  
And she knows Kyla can see it in her stare, can feel all that love that went missing and now is returned. From Kyla to Ashley. From Ashley to Kyla. And they've got something good, too.

_Something __**really**__ good._

/ / /

"Are you sure?"  
"Yes."  
"I mean really sure, though... you don't have to, okay? I was just being-"  
"Over-dramatic?"  
"Uh... yea, something like that..."

Kyla's grin is sheepish, hair tumbling over her face as she looks down at Ashley. And Ashley softly grins in return.

"Ky, it's okay. I've slept on floors before."

Which is true. And Kyla knows it and Ashley knows it, too. Those were other days and nights, though. Days and nights where Ashley was on the floor because she could barely walk and she definitely didn't care if she were on a bed or not.  
Those were other floors, though.  
That was a different Ashley.

"I know. I just... I don't want you to **have** to... Not for me, Ash."

But Ashley waves her sister off, smiling the whole time. Because this is so small, so tiny of an effort, such an insignificant way to make up for lost time and give some sliver of comfort. Ashley would sleep on a million floors if it meant her sister would be better off.

"I promise, Ky... it's all good."  
"But are you-"

Ashley lays down on her side, away from the bed, tucking one arm underneath her pillow.

"Good **night**, Kyla."  
"Fine, fine... Night, Ash."

The room settles down after that. Madison and Aiden are already long gone from the waking world. Ashley can hear Kyla shifting and breathing heavy before growing quiet. Spencer is the only one she has not heard a sound from in all this time, that body curled up and face buried.  
And then there is Ashley, listening to the hum of freon-filled air moving around and to the faint sounds of people who don't plan on sleeping, in the street and at the bars.  
Bars that she would once lose herself in. Streets that she would wake up in, either covered in vomit or not remembering how she got there.  
Even now, if you asked her, Ashley could probably find the best party - with the best drugs, with the best chances for sex, with the best of everything that is wrong for you.

_That's a bit of knowledge I'll never un-learn, I guess._

"Psst..."

Ashley blinks and turns over onto her back, eyes adjusting to another level of darkness, back towards the bed and away from the blinds that do not fully block out the light.  
But she knows it is Spencer, can catch the hints of blonde hair, and Ashley pushes herself up a bit so that she is resting on her elbows.

"Wanna sit outside for a while?" Spencer asks in a whisper.

And Ashley is nodding yes before the question even fully registers in her brain, pushing the light blanket off of her legs and standing up. Spencer slips out of the bed, looking back for a moment to see if Kyla is disturbed - which she is not.  
Then they both move towards the door, Spencer sliding the chain-lock and her hand reaching back to find Ashley, to pull her out of the room and to tug her along to the end of the open-air walkway.  
It over-looks one of the roads by the motel, all the cars silent but foot traffic still about, even after three in the morning. There are drunks meandering around and there is way too much in the way of public displays of affection going on, too.  
But there they sit, side by side, legs dangling through the metal balusters and one of them will yawn, which makes the other one yawn in response.

Ashley almost wants to ask why they are out here, why are they not sleeping when they are both so obviously tired, but - deep down - she knows the answers to these inquiries.  
Ashley knows the answers because they are her answers as well.  
And then Spencer leans her head against the bars, turning towards Ashley, and the girl smiles lazily.

"You know what?"  
"Uh, no... what?"  
"I want to know everything about you."

'Everything' is a lot, though. 'Everything' is... well, it's **everything**. It's not just the good times, like this one. It's not just new feelings, like these feelings. It'll be the mistakes and the relapses and all the days when nothing works out. It'll be that past. It'll be the present, too.

_'Everything' is a whole fucking lot to know about a person._

And, yet, the two of you know all about each other's deep end, those waters where you might drown. Spencer knows Ashley is an addict. Ashley knew of Spencer's secret.  
They've mirrored one another during this entire trip, working with crutches and working with honesty, working on how to be themselves in a world they hid from.

_'Everything' is a whole lot to know about someone, but we are already on that journey, aren't we?_

"...And I want to let you know everything..." Ashley says, her voice barely able to be heard, but Spencer can hear it. She knows that Spencer hears her, loud and clear.

And they move as if synchronized, one of Ashley's hands pressing down hard onto the felt-covered concrete below and the other hand lightly tripping over Spencer's cheek, but carrying onward and into Spencer's hair.  
She threads her fingers there, applying the faintest amount of pressure, and Spencer willingly complies. Spencer's head comes forward and tilts to the right and eyes slope and shut and lips part and sweet breath floats into Ashley's mouth right before they finally kiss.

A sober kiss. A truthful kiss. An 'everything' kind of kiss.

_The best kiss of my life._

/ / /

_Everything_.

That's what you are, in your tiny shoes and with the laces undone and sticky face from an ice-cream cake, caught in mid-laugh by the camera your father never would put down. And your mother pulls you aside after the flash, licking her thumb and wiping it over your chin as you squirm, but she is smiling at you the whole time - even as you finally break away and join your collection of friends on that playground, dirt on your knees and grass stains on your shirt.  
You look back, just the once, to make sure that even as you leave and even as you sprint away... They will be there, won't they?  
Your mother and father, they will be there, won't they?

And there they are, grinning and telling you to have fun, ready for when you return.

_Everything_.

They were everything to you. The makers of all your beliefs, the realm upon which you built all your notions, and watching them recede was like watching the world explode and disappear before your very eyes.  
And if love couldn't save them, then how could it save you? And if fighting always leads to ending, then why even start something up with anyone?  
If everything could turn to nothing, then what was the point of **anything**?

And there they are, in your mind and as you remember them, his lips to her brow and an embrace and packages with bows and Sunday dinners and stories as you fall asleep.  
There they are, in your mind and as you remember them, shouts that bounce off the walls and glares from across the room, the way her hand connects with his cheek, the way he walks out the door and says it is not about you, never about you.

But how can you believe that? How can you believe a single thing they say from now on?

_Everything_.

That's what you you are, awake when you should be sleeping and a perfect kiss still lingering on your lips and the sounds of your sister in slumber.  
That's what you are as you get up, eyes bleary but completely open, slipping feet into shoes and putting Kyla's college hoodie on, leaving a little note on your pillow - 'Just down at the beach' - and out the door you go.

A couple of places are up like you are, the smells of coffee mixing with the scent of the sea as you pass establishments, the throwing up of shades and the turning over of signs.  
The six o'clock crowd of men still not sober, of women yet to rest. White beards and parrot-shirts, as if they were all the many shades of Hemingway, as you continue on - the cats running in front of you and the rustle of palm fronds above you.

And you can hear the ocean and you walk a bit faster and your hand reflexively grips around this cell-phone in your shorts pocket. You hold it a bit tighter than before. Maybe a part of you is wishing you'd just forget about it and turn around and pretend some more.  
What's one more day, right? What's one more week? One more month?

What's another year after all the time that has passed?

But there you are, Ashley Davies, looking out as the sun rises over the water - a kaleidoscope of pink and yellow, spilling out into the deep blue dawn - and every second that has flown by you, every time you wanted to reach out to them and didn't, every time they wanted to find you and couldn't...

Here you are, Ashley, at the first day of the rest of your life. And you can't turn back now. You can't turn back, nor do you want to.

/ / /

She sits down on the sand and pulls the phone out, tracing the pattern of the numbers with her gaze. And with each one she eventually presses, another breath gets lodged in her throat and there is this terrifying heat behind her eyes and the fact that - in California - it is still nighttime does not seem to matter.

She is crying silently, an ancient river down her face, and all that stunted air is now permanently stuck in her body - refusing to move, refusing to expand.  
And it rings. And it rings. And it rings.

But when it is finally answered with a voice she has not heard in so long, Ashley chokes out a name with her sob and the breathing begins and the blood flows again and everything will be okay. She knows it. She knows it like nothing else.

_Everything will be okay. I'll just take it day by day and I'll be okay. I'll be okay._

"Mom?"

A gasp travels along the lines and sinks into Ashley's heart.

"...Ashley, is that you? Is that really **you**?"

And in that heart, Ashley finally finds home.

/ / / / / / /

**-END-**


End file.
